Titleaddress

Titleaddress is a term used in information organization and document engineering to denote a stable locator for a document’s title element within a structured resource. It combines a canonical title identifier with a navigational path or selector that identifies where the title value resides, such as within a DOM, a JSON object, or a metadata record. The concept is intended to provide a persistent reference to a title, even as surrounding content or formatting changes.

Construction and syntax typically involve two components: a title identifier and a location specifier. The identifier may be the normalized title text or a dedicated title URI, while the location specifier points to the storage location of the title, using forms such as a path in a data structure (for example, a JSON pointer like /work/title) or a selector indicating a position within a document (for example, a DOM-like path or a metadata field name). In practice, titleaddress can be implemented as part of catalogs, metadata pipelines, or content management schemas to support reliable retrieval and disambiguation of titles.

Applications include digital libraries, archival systems, content management, and indexing workflows. Titleaddresses enable stable references to titles across editions, translations, or format changes, facilitating search, linking, and metadata interoperability. They are often used alongside global identifiers such as DOIs or URIs to provide both a persistent identity and a precise location within a resource.

See also: locator, path, XPath, CSS selector, JSON Pointer, DOM, metadata, title element, schema.org.