Drop By!

Am 17. Juni 2008 fanden in Brüssel zwei Meetings statt, die die Entwicklung des Handle Systems betreffen. Zum Einen der Handle System Workshop (erstmalig in Europa), zum Anderen ein Meeting der International DOI Foundation .

IDF Meeting 

DOIs sind nicht anderes als Handles mit zusätzlichen Regelungen, einem Layout und Schema sowie Services drumherum. DOIs und der DOI Resolver sind ein Bestandteil des globalen Handle PID und Resolution Infrastructure.

Den deutschsprachigen Raum betreffend würde ich die Präsentation des TIB Hannover hervorheben: Access to Non-textual Information: The Big Challenge for Libraries – What the DOI System Can Do to Help .

• The German Research Foundation (DFG) has started the project Publication and Citation of Scientific Primary Data to increase the accessibility of scientific primary data, starting with the field of earth science.
• The German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) is now established as a “non-commercial” DOI-registration agency for scientific primary data as a member of the International DOI Foundation (IDF).

Die wissenschaftlichen Daten sollen in den Bibliothekskatalog und über DOI referenzierbar und mit den Artikeln u.ä. verknüpft werden. Bspw. bekommen Kristall-Strukturen eine DOI verpasst.

Handle System Workshop 2008

Wer nutzt es?

• Library of Congress
• DTIC (Defense Technical Information Center)
• IDF (International DOI Foundation)
  • CrossRef (scholarly journal consortium, representing >2K publishers & societies)
  • CAL (Copyright Agency Ltd – Australia)
  • MEDRA (Multilingual European DOI Registration Agency)
  • Nielsen BookData (bibliographic data – ISBN)
  • R.R. Bowker (bibliographic data – ISBN)
  • Office of Publications of the European Community (OPOCE)
  • German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB)
  • Wanfang Data
• OECD
• NASA
• National Agricultural Library/USDA
• DSpace (MIT + HP)
• ADL (DoD Advanced Distributed Learning initiative)
• Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library
• Australian Dept. of Ed., Sci, and Training (DEST) – PILIN project
• Clarin (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure)

Interessant ist das PILIN Project, die genau das leisten, was für einen nachhaltigen Handle System bzw. PID Infrastruktur Betrieb nötig wäre. Der Vortrag gibt eine gute Übersicht über die Probleme und Tragweite, kann als guter Ausgangspunkt benutzt werden für eigene Überlegungen. Unter anderem wird auf FRBR Bezug genommen.

Zu erwähnen ist Crossref.org ebenfalls mit einem Vortrag anwesend.

CLARIN macht Ähnliches wie wir, siehe der Vortrag : “The CLARIN project is a large-scale pan-European collaborative effort to create, coordinate and make language resources and technology available and readily useable. As one of its goals CLARIN will create a federation of LR repositories and aims to create a unified resource registry using persistent identifiers.” Single resource identifier system for all “published” resources using the Handle System. Unified metadata catalogue. Identity federation using Shibboleth. Zusätzlich Problem mit verteilten Registries. Deswegen werden dort auch Tools entwickelt zum Verschieben, Wiederherstellen usw. von Handles – etwas was mit der Übernahme von externen Handles bspw. DOIs von Nature usw. interessant werden könnte.

Damit zusammenhängend (DAM-LR Distributed Access Management for Language Resources) Engagement der MPG:

• Single resource identifier system for all “published” resources using the Handle System. Unified metadata catalogue. Identity federation using Shibboleth. Zusätzlich Problem mit verteilten Registries. Deswegen werden dort auch Tools entwickelt zum Verschieben, Wiederherstellen usw. von Handles – etwas was mit der Übernahme von externen Handles bspw. DOIs von Nature usw. interessant werden könnte.
• Proposal within the MPG to support a MPG wide PID registration service based on the HS.
• Run by MPG computing center GWDG

Neue Entwicklungen

Dazu konsultiere man Introduction and Handle System Update ab slide 20 . Unter anderem

• Konfigurierbare und parametrisierbare Auflösung auf mehrere URLs
• Auflösung von nicht registrierten Handles nach Namensmustern, spart Speicherplatz, wird realisiert über neues Storage Modul
• Mehr globale Mirrors
• Update der RFCs
• Registrierung von Handles als URI Schema (im Augenblick : info:hdl )

Handle soll innerhalb von GRIDS benutzt werden um Objekte verteilt zu identifizieren: Grid Computing

Handle Types

Die bisherigen Typen für Handle Values sollen über eine Registry erweiterbar und formalisierbar werden. Beteiligung der Nutzer.

Siehe Handle Value Types.

Link to an interesting comparison from the year 2000 Competitive Evaluation of PURLs. Anyway there might be some changes coming soon regarding PURL: … redesign OCLC’s PURL service.

The Handle System provides a distributed infrastructure to manage persistent identifiers (PID) of digital ressources and resolve to their locations. There are several advantages of the Handle system like: scalability, detailed documentation, typed records structure, working global resolution infrastructure and last but not least – stable and readable Java code. By default a Handle server and its clients are designed to participate in the global PID resolution infrastructure.
But if you like to experiment with a local installation within your development environment you can follow these steps (you should be familiar with the Handle basics and Chapter 11 of the Technical Manual, also read the Handle System Service Agreement http://hdl.handle.net/4263537/5029 for more information).

Server setup:

1. Download the source of Handle software distribution from handle.net
2. This distribution comes with a SimpleSetup tool (see also the docs :Handle Manual), you have to edit some lines of the net.handle.server.SimpleSetup source file to be able to configure the server to run on 127.0.0.1 (you could do this by editing the config.dct file, but then there will be more work to set up the client). Change the getIPAddress() function to (commenting IP number check):
   

   /******************************************************************************
   * Get IP address for server
   */
   private static InetAddress getIPAddress()
   throws Exception
   {
   String localAddress = "",
   prompt = "Through what IP address will this server be accessible?";
   try {
   localAddress = InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostAddress();
   }
   catch (Exception e)
   {
   localAddress = "";
   }
   if (localAddress.length() > 0)
   prompt = prompt + " [" + localAddress + "]";while (true)                                 // I.e., until "break" on success
   {
   String line = responseToPrompt(prompt);
   if ((line.equals("")) && (localAddress.length() > 0))
   line = localAddress;try {
   InetAddress listenAddr = InetAddress.getByName(line);
   /*  if (listenAddr.getHostAddress().startsWith("127."))
   throw new Exception("you must enter an address that is accessible from the network");*/
   return listenAddr;                                      // Success
   }
   catch (Exception e)
   {
   out.println("Invalid address (" + e + "), please try again.");
   }
   }
   }

3. Compile net.handle.server.SimpleSetup and run it. (I imported the source to Eclipse and run it directly from there)
4. Answer the questions as described in the manual. Use 127.0.0.1 as IP to run it locally.
5. Home a prefix of your choice by inserting it to the nas table (nas.jdb).
   1. Run the provided DBTool
      java -cp  ./bin/handle.jar net.handle.apps.db_tool.DBTool ./svr_1/
   2. Add a test naming authority like 0.NA/1 .
   3. Add a handle for the admin 1/ADMIN with HS_PUBKEY and HS_SECKEY type at index 300 and 301 (so you can experiment with both authentication methods):
      300 HS_PUBKEY 1110 <hexcode of your pubkey>
301 HS_SECKEY 1110 secret
      (I couldn’t get the variant using FILE <path>/svr_1/admpub.bin as value here to work, cause FILE contents is not read from the server prior to authentication, the path to admins pubkey assumes that servers working dir is “pathtohandleserver”/hs or set Java property -Duser.dir=”pathtohandleserver”/hs on start up)
   4. Create a few handles like 1/TEST with HS_ADMIN at index 100: use DBTools “Create Handle” -> Enter New Handle:”1/TEST” -> Ok -> Add -> Index: 100 , Type: HS_ADMIN , Data-Edit: select Admin Info and fill in Admin ID Handle: 1/ADMIN and Admin ID Index: 300 (or 301), set appropriate rights, add further values and types.
6. Edit the servers config.dct file:
   1. Add configuration options for independend server:
      

      "server_config" = {
      "server_admin_full_access" = "y"
      "allow_na_admins" = "no"

   2. Change admin values to
      

      "server_admins" = (
      "300:1/ADMIN"
      "301:1/ADMIN"
      )

      and same for other admin elements.
7. Start up server
   /hs$ java -cp ./bin/handle.jar net.handle.server.Main svr_1/

Configure Client (linux):

1. Create ~/.handle directory in users home.
2. $ cp  “pathothandleserver”/hs/svr_1/siteinfo.bin ~/.handle/resolver_site
3. In ~./handle create a file local_nas, which should contain one prefix on each line. Every request for a handle having a prefix contained in this file will be sent to the local resolution site. Add one line “O.NA/1″.
4. Restart server and browse the proxy at http://127.0.0.1:8000 .

Thinking about the design of a Persistent Identifier (PID) and resolution infrastructure based on the handle system for the Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund (GBV), I came up with the following diagram, which is also an experiment how much graphics is possible just by using only plain HTML and CSS (tested with newest Opera and Firefox versions on kubuntu 6.10).