1. URN management at Die Deutsche Bibliothek

In Germany there are exceptional challenges with respect to a national URN management because of heterogeneous conditions of certain libraries within a federal organized library community. These conditions have been targeted by establishing a cooperative URN management for online dissertations.

1.1 General concept of the URN management within the international name space “National Bibliography Number“ (NBN)

1.1.1 Name space “National Bibliography Number“ (NBN)

Die Deutsche Bibliothek is assigning URNs within the name space “National Bibliography Number“ (NBN)[4]. NBN is an initiative of both the CDNL and CENL devoted to the introduction and management of PIs within the URN system.[5] The goal is to develop the NBN as a distributively managed hierarchical name space. The Library of Congress (LoC) is designated as the global registration agency for the name space "NBN“. Each individual national library is to be given a sub name space, in which it can assign and administer NBNs independently. The scope for the sub name space of individual national libraries corresponds to the collective commission of individual national library. NBNs administered at Die Deutsche Bibliothek have the following prescribed structure:

urn:nbn:de[...]

The Uniform Resource Name “urn“ identifies the resolution routine, “nbn“ stands for the officially registered name space , and “de“ is the sub name space for Germany.

1.1.2 General URN management concept

Die Deutsche Bibliothek, in co-operation with German library associations and university libraries, established a distributed URN assignment. The assignment of URNs for online dissertations can be done by all participating university libraries. URNs are registrated and resolved centrally at Die Deutsche Bibliothek. To ensure that decentralized assigned URNs are unique the hierarchical structure of NBN-based URNs at regional level has been extended. Following recommendations related to the formal number structure of the NBN based URN at national level have been applied

urn:nbn:de:[designation of library associations]:[official notation of university libraries] -[string][check number]

This model of a cooperative URN management enables participating university libraries

• to assign URNs independently and immediately, to adapt the structure of the last part of
• the URN string to the local conditions and
• to delegate autonomous URN assignment to further associated institutions.

1.2 Workflow of URN registrationWorkflow description

After an university library has assigned a URN, it is sent to Die Deutsche Bibliothek together with the metadata set of the online dissertation. The online publication is archived by the Die Deutsche Bibliothek. The URN will be entered added to the catalogue as an element of the title record. The URN reporting process represents a further expansion of the registration process for online dissertations currently in use.

Fig. 1 URN registration workflow at Die Deutsche Bibliothek

1.3 German administrative and descriptive Metadata Standard for online dissertation

The information that enables the registration and archiving of online dissertations is based on a metadata set described by the national Metadata Application Profile called “METADISS“[6]. This metadata standard is derived from the international meta data standard “Dublin Core“. It determines the representation of the metadata using the HTML markup language.

<META NAME="DC.Publisher.CorporateName" CONTENT="Universit&auml;tsbibliothek Hannover und Technische Informationsbibliothek">

<META NAME="DC.Publisher.CorporateName.Address" CONTENT="Welfengarten 1B, 30167 Hannover">

<META NAME="DDB.Contact.ID" CONTENT="F6000-0244">

<META NAME="DC.Type" CONTENT="Text.PhDThesis">

<META NAME="DC.Creator.PersonalName" CONTENT="Schmachtenberg, Oliver">

<META NAME="DC.Creator.PersonalName.DateOfBirth" SCHEME="ISO8601" CONTENT="1970-12-12">

<META NAME="DC.Creator.PersonalName.PlaceOfBirth" CONTENT="R&uuml;sselsheim">

<META NAME="DC.Title" LANG="eng" CONTENT="Nitric oxide in the olfactory epithelium">

<META NAME="DC.Language" SCHEME="ISO639-2" CONTENT="ger">

<META NAME="DC.Contributor.CorporateName" CONTENT="Hannover, Universit&auml;t, Fachbereich Biologie">

<META NAME="DC.Date.Accepted" SCHEME="ISO8601" CONTENT="2001-06-25">

<META NAME="DC.Subject" SCHEME="DNB-Sachgruppe" CONTENT="32">

<META NAME="DC.Identifier" SCHEME="URL" CONTENT=" http://edok01.tib.uni-hannover.de/edoks/e01dh01/332175294.pdf">

<META NAME="DC.Format" SCHEME="IMT" CONTENT="application/pdf">

<META NAME="DC.Identifier" SCHEME="URN:NBN:DE" CONTENT="urn:nbn:de:gbv:089-3321752945">

<META NAME="DDB.Contact" CONTENT="ursula.krys@tib.uni-hannover.de">

<META NAME="DDB.Identifier" SCHEME="URL" CONTENT="http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?idn=962820598&dok_var=d1&dok_ext=pdf&filename=962820598.pdf">

Fig. 2 Example of a metadata record

1.4 Access and Presentation of URNs within bibliographic information services at Die Deutsche Bibliothek

URNs administered by Die Deutsche Bibliothek are accessible about different channels:

- The national bibliography contains URNs. Furthermore the “Automated Library Exchange Format“ (MAB) is used to deliver URNs about several bibliographic services.

- Within the online catalogue a URN is searchable by selecting the research category “Standardnummer“ (standard number e.g. ISSN, ISBN and URN). At present URLs are replaced with URNs. Additionally to URNs the reference link to the intermediate front-page of an archived online dissertation at Die Deutsche Bibliothek will be visible.

- URNs are presented in the WebOPAC as a visible string e.g. “urn:nbn:de:gbv:089-3321752945“ that refers to its URL presentation in the form of http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:gbv:089-3321752945

Fig. 3 Example of a title record of an online disseration within the online catalogue

The intermediate front-page contains also a URN. The intention is to inform the user about the existence of a URN for reliable citation.

Fig. 4: Example of an intermediate front page of the archived online dissertation at Die Deutsche Bibliothek <http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?idn=962820598>

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