PERSISTENT IDENTIFIERS:WHAT IF?

16/19 – Persistent

"You see, persistence refers to a number of aspects which are not only technical, but also related to the policies and commitments of institutions. They should be committed to creating and maintaining their PIDs in order to give exhaustive information about their collections, no matter what."
Persistent
Persistence refers to the lifetime of an identifier, during which it should not possible to reassign it to another resource or to delete it.
If an organisation can guarantee that a PID will be managed so that it will survive changes to ownership and PID system, then an external user can be confident of its persistency.

Therefore:
Organisations should commit themselves to the persistence of their PIDs and make clear to others what they mean by 'persistent' and how this will be implemented. Persistent Identifiers (PIDs): recommendations for institutions (PDF) by Gordon McKenna and Roxanne Wyns.