Some weeks ago, the 50 millionth URN was registered with the German National Library’s URN service –a reason to celebrate for us!

The “Uniform Resource Name” (URN) is a form of a “Persistent Identifier” (PI or PID) and helps to permanently address resources on the web. The German National Library started assigning URNs back in 2001, initially as part of a project. They have proven themselves in practice as stable and sustainable PIs. Therefore, we have consolidated the DNB’s URN service and also make it available to partner institutions to use it free of charge.

Over the last 20 years, the migration of science and publishing into the internet has tremendously increased the demand for support infrastructure such as PID allocation services. Meanwhile, persistent identifiers such as the URN have become firm fixtures in the digital world and are now indispensable in the fields of science and research. We will therefore continue to rely on our well-established URN infrastructure in the future while offering access to our expertise in this area.