What is PersiD?
Guaranteed Access to electronic resources
Guaranteed access to digital publications and other electronic resources over time is an important aspect of the scientific and cultural heritage domains. It requires an unambiguous identification of digital objects. For the benefit of interconnecting research activities, is should be able to use these objects across domains as well as within applications.
In order to provide global guaranteed access, PersID aims to establish a persistent identifier infrastructure that unambiguously identifies and locates objects. This infrastructure must be open, interoperable, trusted and controlled by all actors in the research and cultural heritage community – and capable to incorporate other global identifier initiatives.
The most open and versatile system: URN
PersID builds on the widely used identifier system that is based on the URN scheme for naming resources. The URN system is used by national libraries, data archives and cultural heritage organisations in Europe and beyond. The partners in PersID will establish local resolver services and a global resolver service for the resolution of URNs, to identify and locate a large variety of electronic resources.
The deciding factor for PersID in choosing the URN scheme is its ability to accommodate existing national identifier schemes, such as URN:NBN and other identifier systems such as ISBN, DOI and others within the overall URN scheme.
Scholarly community in control
The needs of the scholarly and cultural heritage community are in focus in the PersID initiative. . All stakeholders in the persistent identifier life-cycle (naming, registration, location and preservation of digital objects) are involved.These include the researcher who is dependent on adequate dissemination of research outcomes, libraries and authorities who manage the identifiers, and preservation agencies who guarantee the integrity of digital objects. In PersID higher education, research and cultural heritage bodies work together to establish a trusted and well governed service infrastructure for global use.
Cooperation in technology and governance
The overall goal of PersID is to guarantee access to electronic scholarly and cultural resources. PersID therefore aims for a complete technical infrastructure which supports persistent identifiers. The infrastructure has two layers, the national and the global. On the national level, there are the resolver servers which have information enabling location of digital objects through its identifier. A global resolver service is able to redirect queries to the correct national-level resolver.
In addition to technology, a functional organisation is essential. Only a common, trusted governance with a sound business model can ensure sustainability over time and the continuing development of services dedicated to resolving and accessing digital objects. Solid and transparent governance will attract new partners and give the service weight and coverage through a critical mass. In answering the needs of the scholarly and cultural heritage community stakeholders, will brand the system with trust and quality.
In 2010: Studies, infrastructure and governance roadmap
Both the technical and organisational aspects will be fully addressed in the PersID initiative. Studies exploring the persistent identifier landscape, identifying user requirements and feasible business models, policies and governance approaches will be conducted for Knowledge Exchange [should be linked] and the development of the technical solutions, (on behalf of SURFshare programme [link] will result in a first instance of a working infrastructure and shared governance policies. In a year a roadmap will be presented with recommendations for further growth.
Knowledgeable, inspired and open to all
The PersID organisations (ten, and growing) combine a large amount of experience already acquired through existing national persistent identifier solutions. Time has come to join in coordinating with other European efforts and stakeholders to ensure reliable global access to information objects built upon a viable persistent identifier infrastructure.
The potential of the URN system, which is open and able to adapt to other systems, the shared ambition is to provide a quality resolver service. The support of organisations in and outside the PersID initiative will provide the global scholarly and cultural heritage communities with guaranteed access to digital publications.