Developing Handle System® Web Services at Cornell University

Recognizing the importance of consistently implementing persistent identifiers (PIDs), a group of librarians at Cornell University evaluated several PID strategies and chose to implement the Handle System. As a member of that group, the author immediately perceived cultural and technical challenges to adopting handles that included accommodating diverse computing platforms. The development of cross platform Web Services and corresponding client libraries are explored as a way to address these challenges and create new opportunities for future development and maintenance of digital collections.