DCC Workshop on Persistent Identifiers

Philip Hunter gives a personal view of this workshop held in Glasgow, 30 June - 1 July, supported by NISO, CETIS, ERPANET, UKOLN and the DCC. The article focuses on a selection of speakers to illustrate the range of the meeting. There were other important contributions to the discussion, not reflected here. All of the presentations are available on the DCC Web site [1]. Chris Rusbridge introduced the meeting by suggesting that the business of identifiers seems easy, but in fact it is not at all easy to understand the world of Persistent Identifiers (PIs), and there are some 'seriously hard' questions. Identifiers are not just URIs (Unique Resource Identifiers) such as isbn, issn, credit card numbers, star names, proteins, standards, keys, etc. Identifiers relate to different things (with different requirements). But identifiers also relate to quite different classes of things, such as services, collections, series, etc. Identifiers can be used to refer to the abstract concept of a work versus particular versions (editions). The binding between identifier and resource is what needs to be persistent. Tim Berners-Lee once said that 'Cool URIs don't change'. Chris summed up his introduction by saying that the aim of the workshop was to understand the requirements pertaining to this particular space from the preservation and curation angle.