DOI® News
June 2008
DOI® News is a public news release. Information contained within
this newsletter may be reproduced and disseminated to all interested parties.
In this issue:
- ISO standard on the DOI System: Update
- Presentations IDF Annual Meetings 2008
- Recent DOI Tools
- Overview article on the DOI System: Revised
The DOI System is currently being standardised through the International Standards Organisation, ISO. In April 2008 the Committee Draft was approved, after voting by ISO's national bodies, for distribution as a Draft International Standard (DIS). Following ISO's procedures, the Working Group is now addressing comments that were received with the ballot; it is expected that the DIS will be distributed no later than 20 August 2008. Depending upon the result of further voting, the final standard will be published in late 2008 or 2009.
Presentations from the recent IDF Open meeting held in Brussels, are now available. The meeting attracted approximately 100 registrants and stimulated useful debate, including a lively panel discussion. An introduction by Norman Paskin (IDF) set the scene for four presentations:
- In "Resource Description and Access for the Digital World", Gordon Dunsire (Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde) described several current large metadata activities and their interrelations, and described work to extend this through creating a comprehensive vocabulary of resource relators and categories, to provide a mapping to support metadata crosswalks and transformations and a reference set to support further standards work to map the major metadata activities.
- Enabling Access By Permission; Standards for Rights Expression Within the ONIX Family, by Brian Green (Editeur) discussed ONIX and the ACAP project.
- Jan Brase (TIB Germany) discussed Access to Non-textual Information, describing this as the big challenge for libraries and outlining what the DOI System can do to help, including a proposal for collaboration among libraries which is already beginning to bear fruit.
- Access to National Resources, and the implications of current work on persistent identification, was discussed by Jill Cousins (Executive Director, European Digital Library Foundation).
The speakers participated in a concluding workshop moderated by Chris Barlas (Chris Barlas Associates). Also of interest from the related
Handle System Workshop was a presentation on "DOI Impact on End Users" from Ed Pentz of CrossRef.
A priority of the International DOI Foundation is to encourage and enable the development of tools to facilitate the use of the DOI System and DOI names by end users. The list of
DOI System Tools identifies tools that are currently available, with descriptions and links to their sources, and tools that are currently under development: it now comprises fourteen tools, from a variety of sources.
Recent additions focus on tools for the
Handle System which provides the resolution component of the DOI System:
- OpenHandle: an alternative Handle Client interface for the Handle System, it is an open-source project hosted on Google Code. Its aim is to facilitate access to the Handle System by presenting the data records as simple markup documents available through a web service. OpenHandle is implemented as a Java servlet-based front-end to the Handle System and exposes Handle records as RDF/XML, RDF/N3, and JSON. Additional serializations can be readily added as required. Community involvement is invited.
- OpenDOI: A doi: and hdl: resolver for Mac OS X. This application by Brian de Alwis adds support for resolving URNs of the form 'doi:string' and 'hdl:string' for users of Mac OS X. It is based on an AppleScript that redirects those URNs to a proxy server, either http://dx.doi.org or http://hdl.handle.net respectively. This tool is in the public domain.
The overview article about the DOI System which has been on our web site for some time has now been revised and updated following reviewers comments, and is recommended as a starting point for those new to the DOI System.
For further information see
Overview article on the DOI System for the forthcoming third edition of the
Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (recently updated) .
The DOI is a system for interoperably identifying and exchanging
intellectual property in the digital environment. A DOI assigned to content enhances a content producer's ability to trade electronically. It provides a framework for managing content in any form at any level of granularity, for linking customers with content suppliers, for facilitating electronic commerce, and enabling automated copyright management for all types of media. The International DOI Foundation, a non-profit organization, manages development, policy and licensing of the DOI to registration agencies and technology providers and advises on usage and development of related services and technologies. The DOI system uses open standards with a standard syntax (ANSI/NISO Z39.84) and is currently used by leading international technology and content organizations.
This is a service announcement for the International Digital Object
Identifier Foundation and has been prepared to inform you of developments to enable digital copyright management of intellectual property. For more information, please send your request to contact@doi.org.
Prepared 27 June 2008
[Link updated 30 June 2009]
