mEDRA s.r.l. in Milano (Italy) and digilibri GbR (Germany) announce a partnership program for the dissemination of DOIs by digilibri in Germany, Switzerland and Austria with full technical support from mEDRA

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) enables publishers and other disseminators of authentic information, e.g. news agencies, online services, to deposit a unique and permanent number with metadata for each original content, independent of location and time, and in a syntax that is understood by the World Wide Web (WWW). The DOI combines the value of being a unique standard identification system with a powerful technology (Handle^® system), which allows direct resolution from any DOI to the identified content and/or to the relevant piece(s) of information about that content. The DOI should be of interest to any Copyright Registration Agency as well.

Over 17 million DOIs have been registered already. DOI will become an ISO standard soon. Using the DOI for permanent identification, retrieval and referencing avoids the problems that we currently have with URLs, which simply disappear.

digilibri will serve as the licensing, marketing and service partner for publishers, online services, news agencies, but also for photographers, illustrators, authors, editors, libraries, galleries in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The technical service and further developments will be provided by mEDRA.

mEDRA is the multilingual European DOI Registration Agency, born within the EC Content Programme, and now a company with offices in Milan and Bologna. Parents are the Associazione Italiana Editore (AIE) and the university consortium CINECA in Bologna. mEDRA has been instrumental in introducing the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) in Europe. DOIs have been registered up to now primarily to journal articles and monographs, but the system is ready to assign DOIs to any type of digital content.

digilibri is a new agency and publisher in Heidelberg for digital content. digilibri was founded in 2004 by Arnoud de Kemp and Ingrid Maria Spakler. Both have a strong background in scientific and professional publishing. The company is building up an online digital asset management system, which will be opened during the next few weeks and officially presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2005. digilibri is pioneering in developing metadata and assigning DOIs to digital images, but the database is open for other types of digital content as well.

Piero Attanasio, CEO of mEDRA: "I am delighted with this partnership, which will support the outreach of DOIs in the German speaking countries. Since its very beginning, mEDRA has been a fully European initiative, based on a network of partners in different countries. By some people Mr. de Kemp is seen as one of the grandfathers of DOI. He has followed the mEDRA project since its start in 2002. We already cooperate with digilibri in standardisation. Together we will open new opportunities."

Arnoud de Kemp, Founder of digilibri: "The need for improved understanding of how intellectual property in the Internet can be better identified and used is there. In our company we strongly support originality and authenticity of works. The cooperation with mEDRA is ideal as they provide a multilingual service to us and our customers. We will be the first address for DOI in Germany, Switzerland and Austria."

Ingrid Maria Spakler, Co-Founder of digilibri: "The idea to document the originality and ownership of images, especially photographs, by depositing a unique identifier (DOI) with relevant metadata about the original content, is new and will make a striking improvement in rights management. In this way creators can feel secure and customers know what they buy and from whom."

digilibri: info@digilibri.de

mEDRA^®, DOI^®, Handle^®and digilibri^® are registered trademarks. medra.org, doi.org and digilibri.de, digilibri.com and digilibri.nl are domain names of exclusive ownership by mEDRA, the International DOI Foundation (IDF), Inc., and digilibri GbR respectively.