Your persistent Resource Whisperers Bobbi and Cara help you understand the world of Persistent Identifiers so you know your ARKs from your PURLs
Featured Guide: Persistent Identifiers
This LibGuide comes to you from Jesse Long, Data Management and Data Curation Fellow, National Transportation Library - ORCID
Lisa Curtin, USDOT Intern, National Transportation Library - ORCID
The platform for this guide is provided through the National Transportation Library
Guide Encounter:
If you’re a researcher, whether that means performing literature searches or publishing your own research studies, you’ve probably heard about identifiers. But do you know what they’re all about? Be persistent, use this LibGuide, and you surely will. The tabs are all on the left, which makes for simple navigation. Like any good LibGuide, this one starts out with an introduction to the topic. Learn what a Persistent Identifier (PID) is, and if you want a deeper dive, click on the references for detailed source materials. But there’s more to life than PIDs. There’s DOI, ISNI, WhereAmI (just kidding – we made that one up!) Before you get lost in acronym soup, the first tab includes a drop-down button for a glossary that you wouldn’t want to gloss over.
The second tab is a drills down to the world of Digital Object Identifiers (that’s the DOI for you persistent folks). A visual story walks you through all the facets of the DOI world, including what to do if you can’t find a DOI. (Hint, this is where persistence really comes in.) Once you master the basics, continue reading this tab for powerful ways to track DOIs through data solutions.
How do you tell the apple from the tree? With a PID!
Just like an ORCHARD is filled with delicious apples, an ORCID is filled with persistent identifiers that can be used in connection with research and scholarly workflows. ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contributor and the third tab leads you through registering for ORCID IDs and then using them to the fullest. We like the resource Six Ways to Make Your ORCID iD Work for You! listed in this tab, which provides information on building an authoritative ORCID record – while hardly lifting a (digital) finger.
The next tab answers the persistent question, “Why does the National Transportation Library (NTL) recommend DOIs and ORCID IDs?” Why – because it helps NTL to continue its mission to make data available to the public and help increase data sharing in the community. If you want to find out more on this topic, you can read the Plan to Increase Public Access to the Results of Federally-Funded Scientific Research Results listed on this page. This section also holds NTL’s Disambiguating Transportation Authors with Unique ORCID Identifiers Webinar and Poster. Your bloggers Bobbi and Cara are nothing if not persistent, so we just had to look up the word Disambiguating. It means, “remove uncertainty of meaning from,” so we know that these resources and this LibGuide will leave you with no persistent ambiguity about ORCID or any other PID topic.
The last tab is for references, many, of course, with a DOI. The title of the first reference sums the topic of this LibGuide up nicely – “Your number is up.”
So, don’t get lost in the herd – get a PID!
About the Authors:
Bobbi deMontigny is the librarian at the Montana Department of Transportation
Cara Marcus is the resource center manager of National RTAP
0 Comments.