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Persistent Identifier Usage by Cultural Heritage Institutions: A Study on the Europeana.eu Dataset

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Linking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14241))

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Abstract

To inform future decisions regarding the use of persistent identifiers (PID) in the common European data space for cultural heritage, we have analysed the usage of PIDs in the metadata that cultural heritage institutions deliver to Europeana. Focusing on the identification of cultural heritage objects and their digital representations, we present statistics on the usage of 5 PID schemes: Archival Resource Key (ARK), Digital Object Identifier (DOI), HANDLE, Persistent URL (PURL), and Uniform Resource Name (URN). We found that 13% of the Europeana records contain a PID and that ARK and HANDLE are most frequently used. We have also analysed the uniqueness of the existing PIDs and identified some data quality issues.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Obtained via https://pro.europeana.eu/page/harvesting-and-downloads#downloads.

  2. 2.

    ARK identifiers, for example, have been assigned to bibliographic records, persons, organisations, vocabulary terms, archeological artefacts, etc. [9].

  3. 3.

    See full list at [10]. Note that DOIs are also based on the HANDLE system (prefix ‘10’) but given their prominence, we decided to analyse them separately.

  4. 4.

    Cf. The IANA URN NID registry: https://www.iana.org/assignments/urn-namespaces/urn-namespaces.xhtml.

  5. 5.

    E.g. ‘hdl:10622/COLL00467–10’ instead of ‘hdl:10622/COLL00467.10’; ‘URN:URN:NBN:SI:doc-DU27Q92N’ instead of ‘URN:NBN:SI:doc-DU27Q92N’ (for 333,284 PIDs!).

  6. 6.

    https://pro.europeana.eu/project/data-quality-committee#problem-patterns.

  7. 7.

    https://pro.europeana.eu/post/help-us-to-make-cultural-heritage-data-more-persistent.

References

  1. European Commission: Commission recommendation of 10.11.2021 on a common European data space for cultural heritage. European Commission (2021). https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-proposes-common-european-data-space-cultural-heritage

  2. Gordon McKenna, G., Fokke, C.: D 2.2 state of the art report on persistent identifier standards and management tools. Project Linked Heritage (2013). https://www.linkedheritage.eu/getFile.php?id=556

  3. Koster, L.: Persistent identifiers for heritage objects. Code4Lib J. (47) (2020)

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  4. Svensson, L.G.: Universal access to cultural heritage material: the Europeana resolution discovery service for persistent identifiers. In: International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, pp. 184–185 (2010). https://dcpapers.dublincore.org/pubs/article/view/1008

  5. Kotarski, R., et al.: PIDs as IRO Infrastructure-Early Findings (2020). https://doi.org/10.23636/1214

  6. Kotarski, R., Madden, F.: Persistent identifiers as IRO infrastructure: survey data. British Lib. (2020). https://doi.org/10.23636/1210

  7. Klein, M., Balakireva, L.: An extended analysis of the persistence of persistent identifiers of the scholarly web. Int. J. Digit Libr. 23, 5–17 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-021-00315-w

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  8. Europeana Foundation: Definition of the Europeana Data Model v5.2.8. (2017). http://pro.europeana.eu/edm-documentation

  9. Kunze, J.: ARK identifiers FAQ (2021). Accessed 5 June 2023. https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/ARKs/ARK+Identifiers+FAQ#ARKIdentifiersFAQ-ARKedThingsWhatkindsofthingsareARKsassignedto?

  10. Freire, N., Manguinhas, H., Isaac, A., Charles, V.: Inventory of persistent identifiers for cultural heritage objects and web resources provided to Europeana. Technical report (2023). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8169237

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Europeana Foundation, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Nuno Freire, Hugo Manguinhas, Antoine Isaac & Valentine Charles

  2. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Antoine Isaac

Authors
  1. Nuno Freire
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  2. Hugo Manguinhas
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  3. Antoine Isaac
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  4. Valentine Charles
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nuno Freire .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Amazon, Santa Clara, CA, USA

    Omar Alonso

  2. DataCite, Hannover, Germany

    Helena Cousijn

  3. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Gianmaria Silvello

  4. Europeana Foundation, BE Den Haag, The Netherlands

    Mónica Marrero

  5. University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Carla Teixeira Lopes

  6. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Stefano Marchesin

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Freire, N., Manguinhas, H., Isaac, A., Charles, V. (2023). Persistent Identifier Usage by Cultural Heritage Institutions: A Study on the Europeana.eu Dataset. In: Alonso, O., Cousijn, H., Silvello, G., Marrero, M., Teixeira Lopes, C., Marchesin, S. (eds) Linking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries. TPDL 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14241. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43849-3_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43849-3_31

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-43848-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-43849-3

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