Afternoon session at UKSG on institutional identifiers

This is to add to the Blog by Mary Page and give you just a bit more about UKSG on Monday Afternoon. Helen Henderson of Ringgold presented a briefing session on a new project underway to create a new persistent institutional identifer that would essentially identify buying units, or licensing units for an institution. The scheme at present would assign a "dumb" identifier covering the entire institution, and then other identifiers as needed for sub-units of that institution that purchase information resources. Among many possible uses, this would help clarify purchasing institutional units for electronic resource licenses, and also allow more consistent treatment of these units in data exchanges between publishers, agents, libraries, and various service providers. Metadata would be associated with the identifer to further enhance its use. The British Library, Highwire Publishers, Ringgold, Swets, and others are participating in the pilot. Helen says to check out www.journalsupplychain.org for the latest information.