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Our .museum top-level domain has stricter naming conventions than many other domains, and which are the subject of ongoing development and considerable input from the museum community. Here we summarise most of the key questions.
How are the .museum naming conventions going to be developed?
The specific nature of .museum naming conventions are being developed during the first stage of .museum operation and through the demonstration periods. Naming conventions are being developed to ensure that both museums and the general public derive the greatest possible benefit from the domain name.
What are the current .museum naming rules and principles?
The naming rules and principles are covered in our Name Requests section, but in summary they are these:
Are there any documents online that I should read first?
Yes, we recommend you start with Introduction to domain naming and then the other documents in our Name Requests section.
Are location designators an obligatory part of the naming convention?
No, there are in no way mandatory part of your name but quite useful, especially if your organisation is multidisciplinary one.
How and what type of .museum name should I choose for my organization?
As a starting point, please refer to MuseDoma's published principles of the .museum naming conventions that provide an example of .museum name request form and explain restrictions for registering directly on the second level. MuseDoma has proposed the use of generic labels at the second level to help ensure adequate availability of meaningful names. The specific.generic.museum name is a good example, where the second level name (generic) would be used for some other informative categorization, such as disciplinary word or geographic location. This would result in names such as ourtown.art.museum and bigwig.house.museum.
It is also desirable that the third-level "specific" part of your name provides the public with as much information as may be possible in a domain name and at least gives a hint about the more specific identity of the museum in question.
It is important to note that the museum community is still in the process of developing its naming conventions. This FAQ list will also be updated with additional policy questions and answers from the Open Forum.
What is a top-level, second-level, third-level label?
Levels in domain names are defined and read starting from the right to the left, fourth.third.second.top, and .museum is our new top-level domain name.
What are the second-level labels going to be used for?
They will be used for generic labels such as discplinary or location designators.
Can I skip the myname.second.museum principle and seek an exemption to register myname.museum on the second-level?
No at the moment we cannot speak about the exemptions to the rules, when rules have not been finilized and stabilized.
What are general restrictions for requesting a name in .museum?
The only restriction is that museums and museum professionals use the sharable second-level domain names. In other words, you cannot register myname.museum, but you can have myname.yourchoice.museum or myname.yourchoice.yourchoice.museum.
Why are we stopping museums registering their names directly on the second-level?
The primary justification is to ensure a reasonable degree of geopolitical subdivision so that all museums can have meaningful designations.
Suppose there are 100 museums called the "Museum of Modern Art" in the world. If you allow first-come-first-served, then the first one to register their name would probably register moma.museum. Perhaps the second one would register modernart.museum. By the tenth museum, we have to resort to merely avoiding the already-used names, for example by registering modern-art.museum. It is easy to see that this scheme benefits the early registrants, but penalizes 95 percent of the community who will have difficult or contrived names.
If we however keep the second-level as a shared registry resource, many more museums around the world can use this category if they wish to, such as nyc.moma.museum and london.moma.museum and belgrade.moma.museum, all of which are fair and good names for such museums.
Do I need to apply for the second-level domain under which I want to place my third level name?
Yes.
I would like to apply for typeofmuseum.city.museum name. Does it mean that my institution is also an owner of second-level label?
No, MDMA will keep all second-level labels as a shared resource until the stability of second-level labels administration has been achieved.
How do I choose best domain name for my museum?
A name should be derived from the name that you usually use. Your name should be on a third or fourth-level label, whilst the second-level label is some generic shared identifier you can suggest which best suits your organisation.
Is there a list of initial second-level domains available?
A list of preliminary names, including the second-level categories, was published on this web site November 9, 2001.
Why use a location as a second-level label?
Every museum is located somewhere and there is nothing artificial about including an indication of this on the second-level of the domain name.
Must I associate my organisation name with disciplinary categories on the second-level, such as myname.discipline.museum?
There is no need for museums to consider associating themselves with disciplinary categories if they perceive no relevance or benefit in doing so.
My organisation's name consists of one word and a museum word. It's a world known museum and one of its kind. Can I register xxxx.world.museum or xxxx.unique.museum?
You are eligible to submit any second-level domain you feel best describes your organisation
My museum is a multidisciplinary one. Can I submit more than one name request for each concept that we want to be associated with, for example, xxxx.discipline1.museum, xxxx.discipline2.museum and xxxx.discipline3.musuem ?
Yes, that's fine. If your "xxxx" was also of generic nature such as: discipline.discipline1.museum, you want to add another qualifier and register a fourth-level domain perhaps as city.science.history.museum.
I don't want to submit multiple registrations. Can I request a xxx.multidisciplinary.museum type of name for my museum?
Yes, you are free to describe your institution as "multidisciplinary", if you feel this name best describes it.
My museum contains the word "national" in its name. Do I keep the word national and apply for something like national.xxxx.museum? or xxxx.national.museum?
The use of the word "national" in itself lacks indication of where that museum actually is and there is a possibility of many requests ending in the same name, such as national.history.museum. Adding a town name and registering a fourth-level domain as to include a city name city.national.history.museum could be one of the possible ways of dealing with the problem.
How do I make sure that other national museums do not apply for the same name I did? such as?
You can't avoid other museums applying for the same name as you do. If not careful many may apply for national.science.museum or national.history.museum, but you can avoid duplicates by applying for more specific name for your organisation and adding a geographic location indicator such as your town, county name or a country one. Your application may turn into a four-level type one, as in queensland.national.history.museum.
Under what circumstances does MuseDoma contemplate permitting the use of "national" in a domain name?
At this stage it maybe worth reading the UK's Re:source Registration Guidelines
Can I apply for myname.location.museum domain where location is a region, or a village name?
Yes, you are absolutely free to include an indication of your location on the second level of domain name.
Can I use the country name as a geographical locator and request myname.country.museum?
The only constraint that has been imposed to us regarding country names is that we should not use the ISO-3166 two-letter country code names, such as .us, .uk, .fr, .de, etc. However, at this point in time it is difficult to predict or perceive any other difficulties with using country names as geographic locators.
Are there any difficulties in using two-letter country code name as a shared second-level label?
Yes, see the question above.
My full museum name consists of "Cityname, Countyname Museum of Ethnography" words, but we are better known by our acronym, "CCME". Can I request a name that contains our acronym under a generic discipline such as ccme.ethno.museum?
Yes certainly.
Can I choose the name of my city as my location qualifier and the shared second-label?
Yes, it's perfectly fine. Although some city names or names of villages are not unique, this still doesn't make them useless as a domain labels. A toys.london.museum name could be a toy museum in London, Ontario, Canada as well as in Great Britain. A myname.london.museum is a different one from myname.paris.museum or myname.nyc.museum.
Will there be director, curator, conservator and other second-level domains for museum professionals?
Applicants are free to suggest any second-level labels to submit their requests, such as firstname.lastname.curator.museum.
Can I request an exemption to the existing naming rules and apply for a name on the second-level label?
No, at the moment, the naming rules have not been fully developed to have exemptions to the rules.
Can I request a name where second-level label is in another language, such as xxxx.kunst.museum?
Yes, you can propose a second-level and lower labels using whatever language you wish. (However, at present the domain name system can only use the 26 latin letters, so no diacritical marks can be used yet, though we look forward to technical developments in this area.)
My museum name request contains a trademark name. Am I OK?
So long as you are a legitimate user of that mark there will be no difficulty.
We are a virtual museum. Are we restricted in any sense as to what name we can registers?
If you are a virtual museum and separately operated from the organisation who also runs a physical presence museum, you can request xxxx.virtual.museum.
08 November 2001 - 1020 UTC