Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Administrative and preservation metadata > Persistent identifiers
Persistent identifiers
Implications for researchers
The most important issues for researchers are not likely to be with the shelfmarks and PIDs themselves per se, but with understanding the relationship between different representations of the same manuscript and knowing how to cite them. The repository will need to provide guidance in citation, and those responsible for the design of access mechanisms should build an understanding of an object's digital provenance into the navigation system.
Discovery
The use of PIDs could allow links to a digital object repository directly from an online EAD catalogue (see Chapter 06 Arranging and cataloguing digital and hybrid archives), without fear that such a link will break when an object is inevitably moved. The PIDs used in the EAD catalogue should be associated with the Intellectual Entity, rather than the original version of the object. When clicking on the link the user could be presented with a metadata 'title page' for the digital manuscript, so that the original and new representations of the object in question (with their own PIDs), and any metadata about them, can be referenced from a single place. It is also possible that staff and researchers would benefit from a look up table which resolves shelfmarks into PIDs. Having initially encountered the Intellectual Entity via an EAD catalogue, the researcher may also wish in future to return to it directly, e.g. by entering its PID straight into their web browser, rather than going via the catalogue entry.
Citation
Institutions will need to provide citation advice to researchers in the form of worked examples. For digital objects best practice will be to cite the PID using the repository's preferred form along with the item's shelfmark. The shelfmarks will ensure consistency for collections with both a digital and an analogue component while appending the PID which will allow others to link directly to the exact version of the digital source described by the researcher.
