PersID

The PersID initiative is designed to guarantee durable access to digital scientific and cultural heritage.

Permanent access to digital publications, data sets and other types of information is increasingly important for the scientific community and cultural heritage. However when a digital source is moved or an administrator changes the link, it can no longer be traced: whoever visits the old link, is confronted with an error. Therefore, unambiguous and constant references to these sources, so-called Persistent Identifiers are essential.

Eight national organizations combine their expertise in the PersID project to set up an infrastructure for Persistent Identifiers. The project partners, representing the interests of Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden, have opted for the URN:NBN system (Uniform Resource Names for National Bibliography Numbers). Because of the open and standardized nature URN:NBN is preferred by the national libraries (DANS uses URN:NBN in the online archiving system EASY). On the one hand the PersID infrastructure consist of the national resolvers that maintain permanent links to the sources based on the URN:NBN identifiers. On the other hand it consists of an international resolver that forwards identifiers to the respective national resolver. Developing a pilot version of this metaresolver is part of PersID. In addition, the project pays attention to updating the IETF Internet standard for URN:NBN.

Besides the technology the PersID infrastructure also explicitly contains policy, such as agreements between organizations about their services related to persistent identifiers. Clear and explicit policy is indeed necessary to ensure confidence that the material is truly stored and accessed in a sustainable manner. PersID also seeks cooperation with users and other organizations behind Persistent Identifier systems, such as DOI and Handle. If they agree to the PersID policy, they can join the PersID infrastructure. Trust, cooperation and to strive for convergence are key goals of the consortium PersID.

Duration: 2009-2011

Contact person at DANS:
Dr. Marjan Grootveld T 06 1210 1514 E marjan.grootveld at dans.knaw.nl

More information
www.persid.org

Besides DANS the following organizations are partners in PersID:
SURFfoundation, Netherlands
Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF), Denmark
Knowledge Exchange, Denmark
Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale (FDR), Italy
Royal Library, Denmark
National Library, Germany
National Research Council (CNR), Italy
National Library, Finland
National Library, Sweden