Uses of identifiers: a library perspective David Seaman Executive DirectorDigital Library Federation

IDF Meeting Tuesday June 22, London

Digital Library Federationhttp://www.diglib.org/ Thirty-three members – major academic and

national libraries, including The British Library; four allies (CNI; RLG; OCLC; LANL)

Created in 1995 by directors of US research libraries; fills a need not simply met by larger library organizations: focus exclusively on DL needs and strategies for large libraries

Be nimble, agile, collaborative Practical and strategic areas of activity

DLF Work -- backgroundUSER SERVICES Dimensions and use of the scholarly information

environment www.diglib.org/pubs/scholinfo IMS – learning technologies and courseware

integration Distributed single collection of our own materialMETADATA STANDARDS Open Archives Initiative support – talk of OAI

transporting content METS (Metadata Transmission Standard)

DLF Work -- backgroundRESOURCE MANAGEMENT XML format for license content (ERMI) Registry of Digital Masters

PRODUCTION Production standards and benchmarks

PRESERVATION Journals preservation Global Digital Format Registry

DOIs and Libraries Great reliance in libraries on DOIs in the

digital scholarship we purchase High degree of library trust and faculty

satisfaction in CrossRef (and DLF interest in its new search experiment)

Increasingly, persistent identifiers are an expected part of the “plumbing” of online journals, comment-worthy only when the functions they allow are absent

Persistent identity: so much need, so little agreement on the solution The lack of persistent naming is one of the

major impediments to digital scholarship and pedagogy (DLF Scholars’ Panel).

The more we use online course-building systems the more we suffer from link rot (links that don’t survive the semester).

Cataloging and name authorities, long-term access and preservation, all beloved library skills – all lead us to persistent IDs

Digital Library IDs Value of unique ID and a resolver service is clear

(identify the object not the location). Plethora of schemes confuse the picture: DOI?

PURL? Archival Resource Key (ARK)? Many homegrown quasi-solutions.

Typecasting is at work – x scheme is only good for y data. “Not Created Here”.

Fear and suspicion of DRM prohibiting legal use – DOI sometimes seen in this context..

Digital Library IDsLong-term viability of an outside scheme is a

fear – “library time” and “publisher time” have been on different scales, historically. Concern about whether system built by and for publishers works for us. Control issue.

Trust that resolution database will be maintained after commercial viability of content fades

Rise of institutional repositories and influence on libraries of ID schemes adopted here.

Appropriate Copy (CrossRef) In 2001, the DLF and DOI communities identified

and solved what has become known as The Appropriate Copy issue (multiple locations for journal article). Very popular solution.

The current solution relies on a single, preconfigured source for metadata describing objects identified by a DOI. This architecture will break with additional DOI registration agencies -- the CrossRef database does not have the metadata for DOIs assigned by other agencies.

Appropriate Copy, the Sequel Jan/Feb 2004: There were 8,400 DOI queries

with an 82% match rate. [Ed Pentz] Queries that didn't match ran from someone

submitting an ISSN or something that is not a DOI to some DOIs that the publisher had posted to their website but not registered in CrossRef (a timing issue). [Ed Pentz]

No obvious problem at the moment – but one to watch.

Content management (DLF-ERMI) license management: XML record to hold licenses

(shareable; deliverable by publishers) DLF team has spent 18 months building set of xml

elements to hold license information Great interest from aggregators and library systems

vendors in common solution IDF interest – meeting planned this summer with

NISO, DLF, and publishers – relation to DOI rights data dictionary work

The Resolution for Libraries Professional pride and ownership of the issue

in libraries is still unclear (we know we are embarrassed when a catalog record leads to a call number that is erroneous so the printed book cannot be found).

Better understanding of the problem needed at senior management level and better under-standing of DOI needed here too.

The Resolution for Libraries Education of the user and the power of raised

expectations: broken links are not inevitable Low user and author expectations need

raising, which is the strongest pressure point on libraries (and publishers)

The solution is no longer a technical one -- explicit “social” contracts for permanence with our reseachers, teachers and students will be the final driver for a common solution