Cary Karp
President & CEO
Museum Domain Management Association
The recent inclusion of seven new generic top-level domains in the Internet Domain Name System provided a basis for proving a number of concepts. One of the purposes underlying the establishment of the .museum TLD was to determine the viability of providing narrowly defined target communities with dedicated domains. A second purpose was to explore the potential of a controlled namespace for enhancing the value of the DNS for the Internet user community.
The protypal impetus that .museum might have towards the future creation of similar TLDs in adjacent communities, for example, .library and .archive, will be discussed from strategic, political and infrastructural perspectives. This will include a review of the activity needed to establish .museum and possible modes for extrapolating from it to enable a less strenuous expansion of the heritage management community’s named presence on the Internet. A second discussion will address problems inherent in the conceptualization of a mnemonic device such as the DNS in terms of semantic potential.