2026-10-27 –, LUMC02
This presentation provides an introduction to the use of Uniform Resource Names (URNs), specifically URN:NBNs, as persistent identifiers, using Finland as an example.
URN:NBN identifiers are currently in use in 13 European countries, with the national library providing services and coordination. However, as there is no organization overseeing the use of URNs on a global level, there used to be little international cooperation in this area, and the profile of URN:NBNs has remained relatively low. The situation has started to evolve with the publication of a URN:NBN landscape report (https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2024052134041) and the launch of the URN:NBN Network in 2024.
The National Library of Finland has been providing a national URN resolution service since 2007. The ease of implementation and cost-free nature of URNs has led to the wide adoption of URN-based persistent addresses in Finland.
Uniform Resource Names (URN) were originally conceived in the 1990s and they continue to live on as a widely used identifier system. URNs are an Internet standard, which was last updated in 2017 (RFC 8141). Currently there are more than 80 URN namespaces, for a range of very different use cases.
One of the most widely used URN namespaces is URN:NBN (NBN = National Bibliography Number). This namespace is currently in active use in thirteen European countries. Each of these countries has a national URN:NBN resolver service, which is usually run by the national library. The library also takes care of the administration of the national URN:NBN namespace. In many countries there are also sub-namespaces assigned for e.g. organisational use.
Unlike some identifier systems, URNs have no registration agencies or service providers who would oversee the use of the PID on a global level. For many years, there was little collaboration between national URN:NBN service providers. This is one of the reasons for URN:NBNs having a fairly low global profile compared to other PID systems. For example, in the fields of scholarly communication and research data management, the global platforms and services are generally built around the use of DOIs, thanks to the strong support provided by the major DOI registration agencies, CrossRef and DataCite. Although URN:NBNs may play an important role on a national level, they have had little visibility in these services.
In 2024, as part of the FAIRCORE4EOSC project, the National Library of Finland (NLF) produced a URN:NBN landscape report (Ulriika Vihervalli: Uniform Resource Name in National Libraries, https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2024052134041), which was based on interviews with other European organisations that provide URN:NBN resolution services. As a follow-up to the findings of the report, the organisations launched the European URN:NBN Network to facilitate discussion and collaboration on the development of shared practices and technical solutions.
Finland is one of the countries with a long history of using URN:NBNs as persistent identifiers. The National Library of Finland has been running a national URN resolver at urn.fi since 2007. The resolver currently knows about 3.5 million Finnish URNs. The total number of resolved URNs at urn.fi is currently in the range of 100 million per year. Although a great deal of this traffic is generated by bots, it is estimated that a substantial portion of these events result from the actions of human users.
All Finnish institutional repositories assign URNs to their items. As the identifiers are free of charge, they can be assigned to all items without concern for the costs. The national URN resolver harvests URN-URL pairs using the OAI-PMH interface of each repository, which means that URNs included in the metadata of an item start to work as persistent addresses automatically. The URN:ISBN namespace is used for the items which have an ISBN and URN:NBN for the items which do not have one.
