Handle System - Applications

Applications

Among the objects that are currently identified by handles are journal articles, technical reports, books, theses and dissertations, government documents, metadata, distributed learning content, and data sets. Handles are being used in digital watermarking applications, GRID applications, repositories, and more. Although individual users may download and use the HANDLE.NET software independently, many users have found it beneficial to collaborate in developing applications in a federation, using common policy or additional technology to provide shared services. As one of the first persistent identifier schemes, the Handle System has been widely adopted by public and private institutions and proven over several years. (See Paradigm, Persistent identifiers.)

Handle System applications may use handles as simple persistent identifiers (as most commonly used, to resolve to the current URL of an object), or may choose to take advantage of other features. Its support for the simultaneous return as output of multiple pieces of current information related to the object, in defined data structures, enables priorities to be established for the order in which the multiple resolutions will be used. Handles can, therefore, resolve to different digital versions of the same content, to mirror sites, or to different business models (pay vs. free, secure vs. open, public vs. private). They can also resolve to different digital versions of differing content, such as a mix of objects required for a distance-learning course.

There are over 1,000 handle services running today, located in 51 countries, on 6 continents; over 750 of them run at universities and libraries. Handle services are being run by user federations, national laboratories, universities, computing centers, libraries (national and local), government agencies, contractors, corporations, and research groups. Major publishers use the Handle System for persistent identification of commercially traded and Open Access content through its implementation with the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system.

The number of prefixes, which allow users to assign handles, is growing and passed 212,000 in 2009. There are four top-level Global Handle Registry servers that receive (on average) 68 million resolution requests per month. Proxy servers known to CNRI, passing requests to the system on the Web, receive (on average) 50 million resolution requests per month. (Statistics from Handle Quick Facts.)

CNRI and ITU (International Telecommunication Union) recently entered into an agreement to collaborate on use of the Handle System (and the Digital Object Architecture more generally) and are working on the specific details of that collaboration; in April 2009 ITU listed the Handle System as an "emerging trend".