European NBN Resolver Infrastructure for PI Interoperability

1. The PersID project Meta (Global) Resolver Service Infrastructure www.persid.org Maurizio Lunghi Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale Bonn 1 Feb 2011 1

2. Rationale • There will not be a worldwide dominant PI system, so the challenge is the interoperability among the major PI systems • Technology is not the most important challenge – but agreedpolicies and governance (preferably under control of the international research, scholarly and cultural heritage communities) • It is necessary to provide (future) services to stakeholders in the (changing) research and scholarly processes and information exchanges …. Knowledge Exchange Consortium & Surf Agency promoted a joint initiative …. 2

3. Objectives • To set up a European infrastructure to resolve the URNs particularly in the NBN namespace • To establish a policyfor long term sustainability of an international resolution and discovery service • To define an interoperability framework among URN namespaces and different PI systems • To review & update the related URN RFCs 3

4. Why NBN? Trust-based – National Libraries are responsible for the management of the namespaces In use– several relevant initiatives are implementing NBN Open & Flexible – suitable for different user communities (cultural, scientific, private ..) –caters for various needs and requirements (e.g. selection criteria, rights management, etc ..) – enables different architectures to share responsibility and sustainability 4

5. Outcoming results - I • Around 7 countries (and other are coming) have decided to set up a unique point of presence for their NBN national registers. • User Requirements and cooperation with Europeana Connect in order to avoid overlapping and competition. Many other initiatives have been contacted for cooperation. • Firstprototype of the Meta Resolver offering a unique entry point for all the 7 countries NBN national registers. • Sustainability policy and costs models analysis and proposal are expected soon. 5

6. Outcoming results - II NBN:DE:IZA:12345 PersID NBN:IT:FRD:12345 NBN answer for any country NBN DE NBN NL NBN IT NBN FIN 6

7. PersID & IETF Revision of RFCs The IETF in a meeting in Maastricht on 26 July 2010 decided to set up a workgroup to revise 3 RFT about URN, on the base of the activity developed by the PersID, with three tasks: • Revision of RFC 2141 (URN Syntax) and RFC 2483 (URN service) • Revision of RFC 3188 (Using National Bibliography Numbers as Uniform Resource Names) • Evaluation of all the other URN-related RFCs, in order to decide if there is a need to revise them 7

8. Participants • Danmarks Elektroniske Fag og Forskningsbibliotek - Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF) • Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - National Research Council (CNR), Italy • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), Netherlands • Deutsche Nationalbibliothek - German National Library • Det Kongelige Bibliotek - The Royal Library, Denmark • Kungliga biblioteket - National Library of Sweden • Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale (FDR), Italy • Kansalliskirjasto - National Library of Finland • SURFfoundation, Netherlands • Knowledge Exchange 8

9. APARSENNetwork of Excellence – 4 yearsWP2200 Identifiers and Citability 9

10. Weak points: a lot of initiatives are on-going but fragmented • A unique PI technology or domain cannot be expected/imposed to all the user communities so we must manage heterogeneity • Added value services tailored on different user communities, like resolvers, are still inadequate and there are not cross-sectoral services • Goals • To provide an overview of the current PI systems/applications by different user communities and criteria for evaluation model to benchmark • To design a reference model to describe an interoperability framework and provide an integrated entry point • To define community-driven added value servicescross-user-domains and applicable to different PI technologies 10

11. Thanks for your attentionMaurizio Lunghilunghi@rinascimento-digitale.it 11

12. Persistence is a contract with the user community Persistence is a matter of Trustworthiness Maurizio Lunghi, Emanuele Bellini, Chiara Cirinnà 12

13. Persistence is a matter of trustworthiness The cloud of Persistent identifiers epc ebu tva ISIL NZL CLEI UUID OID XMLORG Smpte ISSN iso PIN UCI Mace geant MPEG IETF service cgi ISAN S1000D ogc NEWSML fdc publicid IPTC fipa OASIS nfc liberty LSID ISBN NBN ARK WEB3D swift DOI 3gpp PURL dvb IVIS Oma XMPP Handle epcglobal 13

14. Persistence is a matter of trustworthiness Trusted Persistent identifiers Trusted: No identifier is trustable and stable ‘per-se’ all characteristics included trust ability depend by the authority and the trustworthiness of the organisations and the community implementing that specific service. Persistent: The only guarantee of the usefulness and persistence of identifier systems is the commitment shown by the organisations who assign, manage and resolve the identifiers. Identifiers: The Identifier concept is strictly related to the association between an alphanumeric string and the object identified. Before assigning an identifier we must select the digital content for long term use. An identifier for a digital content is like an identity card for a person. 14

15. Persistence is a matter of trustworthiness Persistent identifiers consideration - There are a lot of identifiers (some don’t have a resolution service associated yet) and there is no general agreement on what PI have to be adopt in a community (e.g. Humanities community) - Sometimes the implementation of identification services follow mainly a technical approach neglecting for instance political and administrative point of view. “The persistence is a matter of service (Kunze)”.. yes.. but it is crucial define some parameters and/or guidelines in order to design and evaluate the appropriateness of this service… - The mission of a PI system it is not the mere identification (from this point of view a cool-URI could be sufficient) but the certification of the resource, their authority, their belonging to a specific community (library, audiovisual, etc), the standardization, etc. 15

16. Persistence is a matter of trustworthiness General Evaluation Criteria of Trusted Persistent Identifers Scope Global & Standard Resolvable Reliable Sustainable 16

17. Persistence is a matter of trustworthiness General Evaluation Criteria of Trusted Persistent Identifers 1) Scope 1.1 What types of resources The community must first of all identify clearly what an identifier can refer to, real, digital, abstract objects, what material they want to organise and structural relations, they must also define the use they need to implement also in future. 1.2 Flexibility An identifier system is more effective if it is able to accommodate the special requirements of different types of material or collection within a user community. The granularity, that refers to the level of detail at which persistent identifiers has to be assigned, must be taken into account. 17

18. Persistence is a matter of trustworthiness General Evaluation Criteria of Trusted Persistent Identifers 2) Global & Standard We consider the identifier as a unique label that is associated with a single object in a certain context. This context have to be well defined and regulated by reliable institutions recognised by the user community. Moreover the resolution to multi targets should be only related to different location of the same object instead of for instance to different versions. A local identifier is clearly not suitable. The adoption of a open standard allows the interoperability, wide adoption, well authority, resource production control, etc. 3) Resolvable PI systems must be at least ‘resolvable’ in terms of the possibility to have info-data about a named resource through the domain-resolver. Some PI systems are ‘actionable’ that means they use a resolution protocol like the URL for the effective access to the resource. In any case some additional added value services about the resource would be welcome. 18

19. Persistence is a matter of trustworthiness General Evaluation Criteria of Trusted Persistent Identifers 4) Reliability (the actual contract with the users community) 4.1 Authority The authority of a PI is derived by the authority and credibility of the Naming Assign Authority (NAA) and the Naming Mapping Authority (NMA). Moreover, the ‘authority’ has to be recognised to an institution by the user community. 4.2 Policy The NAA in cooperation with the related user community has to define responsibilities and criteria for accreditation of content provider (es. University digital library). Some of these criteria are referred to the type of policies adopted by content providers for their own repositories. They are important to define the pertinence of that policies in the perspective of to adopt a PI solution It is necessary to establish specific agreements between the NAA and content provider in relation to: content selection, digital preservation global policies, etc. 19

20. Persistence is a matter of trustworthiness General Evaluation Criteria of Trusted Persistent Identifiers 4.3 Robustness of service infrastructure This issue should be faced in relation to a specific community requirements and defined by a Service Level Agreement. Each community has to define its own SLA for naming infrastructure. For instance the resolution service must be always granted via some redundancy strategies that can be different for each community. The register with names association must to be updated but a community can define the frequency of updating; the delay of resolution response should be defined by the user community requirements as well. 5) Sustainable As we said before, ‘sustainability’ depends on the user community will (interest) of using that material now and in future: a PI system is only a minor part of a trusted digital repository for example. The naming service must have a long term sustainable policy and business model in order to assure the ‘persistence’ service promised to users. Its concerns evaluation of costs, technology solutions, standard adoptions, political decisions, etc. 20

21. URL / PDF Registro centrale Registro Centrale risoluzione Deposito legale url?URN Sincronizzazione OAI-PMH url?URN url?URN Istituzione1 Istituzione1 Istituzione N Registro risoluzione url?URN P2P deposito url?URN P2P Registro risoluzione Registro risoluzione deposito deposito Richiesta di risoluzione di URN:NBN:xxx-yyyy URL / PDF URL/ PDF URL / PDF