The Handle System is the
Corporation for National Research Initiatives's proprietary registry assigning
persistent identifier
A persistent identifier (PI or PID) is a long-lasting reference to a document, file, web page, or other object.
The term "persistent identifier" is usually used in the context of digital objects that are accessible over the Internet. Typically, s ...
s, or
handles, to information resources, and for resolving "those handles into the information necessary to locate, access, and otherwise make use of the resources".
As with handles used elsewhere in computing, Handle System handles are opaque, and encode no information about the underlying resource, being bound only to
metadata regarding the resource. Consequently, the handles are not rendered invalid by changes to the metadata.
The system was developed by
Bob Kahn at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). The original work was funded by the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
Originally known as the Adv ...
(DARPA) between 1992 and 1996, as part of a wider framework for distributed digital object services, and was thus contemporaneous with the early deployment of the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
, with similar goals.
The Handle System was first implemented in autumn 1994, and was administered and operated by CNRI until December 2015, when a new "multi-primary administrator" (MPA) mode of operation was introduced. The DONA Foundation now administers the system's Global Handle Registry and accredits MPAs, including CNRI and the International DOI Foundation.
The system currently provides the underlying infrastructure for such handle-based systems as
Digital Object Identifiers and
DSpace, which are mainly used to provide access to scholarly, professional and government documents and other information resources.
CNRI provides specifications and the source code for reference implementations for the servers and protocols used in the system under a royalty-free "Public License", similar to an open source license.
Thousands of handle services are currently running. Over 1000 of these are at universities and libraries, but they are also in operation at national labor