An Experimental Handle Server is located at hs.cnri.reston.va.us (132.151.1.150). Additional handle servers will shortly be available at other sites. This server will accept handles formatted in accordance with version 3 of the Handle Specification (see below) and will return a list of pointers to repositories that contain the digital object whose handle was supplied. The handle server may be used for research purposes by any user of the Internet.
The handle server is quite fast, typically responding to a query in a fraction of a second. The user response will most likely be limited by network speed and latency. The system normally operates with multiple Handle Servers and users may subsequently elect to use caching techniques to minimize remote retrievals. A caching handle server is available to store frequently used handle mapping information locally.
An introduction to the use of Handles may be found at ftp://cnri.reston.va.us/handles/introduction.txt. The specification of the handle format may be found at ftp://cnri.reston.va.us/handles/hdl_format.txt. The latest version of this announcement may be found at ftp://cnri.reston.va.us/handles/announcement.txt.
A postcript description of the handle server interface may be found at ftp://cnri.reston.va.us/handles/doc/handle_interface.ps. The interface document specifies the client library interface and also describes the handle generation service.
A unix version of the client library interface software is available; the compressed tar image may be found at ftp://cnri.reston.va.us/handles/client_library/hs_lib.tar.Z. A file containing patches to integrate the client software into the UNIX/X- Windows version of NCSA Mosaic is available and the compressed tar image may be found at ftp://cnri.reston.va.us/handles/mosaic-2.4-changes/mosaic-hdl.tar.Z. A unix version of the caching handle server software is available; the compressed tar image may be found at ftp://cnri.reston.va.us/handles/caching_server/chqs.tar.Z.
Institutional members of the CS-TR project are registered as users of the handle server. Other institutional members of the research community may also become registered users by submitting an email application to handle-request@cnri.reston.va.us. Generally, one request for registration will be accepted per institution from an authorized administrator; however, multiple handle adminstrators may be assigned by a given institution. Subject to storage availability over time, handles submitted for entry in the handle server database by registered institutions are expected to be retained indefinitely, unless deleted or changed by the appropriate handle administrators.
CNRI reservers the right to limit the number of new entries in the handle server per unit time from each registered institution and others. Anyone can query the Handle Server. There is no charge for use of the handle server by the research community.
On a trial basis, handles may also be submitted for entry by non-registered users subject to the availability of storage. These will be accepted only if they do not conflict with submissions from registered users or with other entries in the database. Such submissions will be retained for 30 days if sufficient storage exists. If sufficient storage does not exist, they may be retained for less than 30 days.
If you have any additional questions or comments, please send email to handle-info@cnri.reston.va.us.