The International DOI Foundation has announced the appointment of TSO (The Stationery Office) as a DOI Registration Agency.

TSO has long operated as a de facto bibliographer for the UK Government in the printed word -- issuing 13,000 ISBNs per annum and maintaining inventory and metadata describing over a quarter of a million official documents and reports, available through its online bookstore and traditional delivery infrastructure.

The use of persistent identifiers is integral and implicit in computer network systems and good information practice discipline. With the introduction of DOIs, fundamental information management problems in the UK official sector can now be overcome, enabling all identifier types to be linked and metadata to be systematically organised across distributed digital environments.

The UK official sector comprises over 70,000 public bodies and has a driving need to create interoperability across its networks as well as with the private sector and the citizen. The use of DOIs will vastly simplify the software development task of suppliers and public sector IT staff. It will also help to solve the conundrum faced by information managers in Government of how to manage information across distributed networks and how to harvest and update metadata. The use of DOIs ensures integration with international standards and enables UK information assets to be networked globally and interoperably.

TSO Director, Dr. Shane O'Neill said: "TSO, sitting neutrally across Government and collecting and distributing information to and from every Government department and agency, is in a unique position to help the entire official and regulatory sector -- clients, users and suppliers -- to implement persistent identifier solutions."

Dr. Norman Paskin, Director of the International DOI Foundation, said: "We welcome TSO into the IDF community. The application of DOIs to public sector information through TSO's deep experience and trusted position is a very welcome step in the evolution of the DOI system, and one which demonstrates that the use of identifiers is key in all areas of information management. TSO's profile in the UK public sector makes it an ideal Registration Agency and a valuable addition to our now wide-ranging list of internationally-based DOI implementors".

For more information contact:

IDF: Norman Paskin, Director, International DOI Foundation
Phone: (+44) 1865 843798
E-mail: n.paskin@doi.org

TSO: Tina Yorke-Edgell, Press Relations, TSO
Phone: (+44) 1603 694496 Mobile: (+44) 7714 245824
E-mail: tina.yorke-edgell@tso.co.uk
Visit the TSO web-site at http://www.tso.co.uk/

NOTES TO EDITORS:

TSO

TSO (The Stationery Office) is the UK's leading provider of information management services. It provides clients with a comprehensive range of advisory and knowledge services, content management and e-services, and publisher services. TSO has more than 200 years experience in publishing official and regulatory information for the UK Government, parliaments and assemblies. Britain's largest publisher by output of number of titles, issuing up to 13,000 publications, CD-ROMs and related products each year, TSO has developed a wide range of services from the authoring and design of electronic and printed information, to management, production, print, distribution, marketing and customer services. TSO maintains and manages more than 50 client websites and also provides leading edge content management solutions to government and commercial clients.

IDF

The International DOI Foundation was created in 1998 and supports the needs of the intellectual property community in the digital environment, by the development and promotion of the Digital Object Identifier® (DOI) system. The Foundation is a registered not-for-profit organization, controlled by an Executive Board elected by the members of the Foundation.