Assigning persistent identifiers to art and design entities

Persistent Identifier (PIDs) are a necessary tool to assure referenceability and - as their name says - identifiability in a bi-unique manner upon which further mechanisms can be built upon, e.g. citability to mention only the probably most important one. Their persistence is a real added value compared to the cool URIs of the Linked Data approach which is not in opposition to a joint use of both PIDs and Linked Data.

Currently, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is prominently used in Switzerland, which is attributed since 2010 by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH). The PID service is used for documents and data and only free of charge for the scientists working for the ETH; a constraint which can be seen for the inhibited use of the service.

For this reason, ICOPAD (= Identités de confiance pour les données de l’art et du design) started in 2017 to reflect on a suitable PID model for the Swiss scientific landscape, specifying all necessary requirements and workflows with a Linked Open Data (LOD) perspective.

ICOPAD is a joint project between four Swiss institutions (namely the HEG Geneva as instigator and managing authority; SIK-ISEA, the Zurich Central Library as well as the Zurich School of Art and Design) who already worked together successfully in a previous project on Linked Data for Art and Design in Zurich (LOD-Z). The goal of ICOPAD is to work out all details underlying the need to loosen the dependency from cool URIs and to give an exemplary showcase that proves the structural feasibility of this approach dedicated to the disciplines of art, design, and digital humanities.

After the period of data exploration, a modelling process started with the axiom-like assertion that the DOI-only approach followed so far in Switzerland is not sufficient which lead to the conclusion that a complement must be found. It was decided to opt for a solution that combines both approaches and creates a link both to the cool URIs of the Linked Data world as well as to all other PIDs.