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What is a Naming Authority? What is an Authority Path?
A naming authority is an organizational entity given the ability to create and maintain persistent identifiers. Naming authorities are arranged in a hierarchical tree structure, where the parent/child relationship indicates administrative oversight. The process of creating a new child naming authority is referred to as delegation: a parent authority delegates some portion of its naming responsibilities to a child authority.
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Every URN in NRS has to be unique. In order to give groups at Harvard the most flexibility in creating unique URNs, groups are given control over a set of URNs that begin with a specific set of characters. A Naming Authority is the set of characters an administrative unit uses to create URNs. Groups can create child Naming Authorities in a hierarchical tree structure to further split up a Naming Authority.
The root naming authority in NRS (URN-3) is administered by LTS. LTS has established a number of top-level naming authorities under URN-3 that correspond to Harvard schools or administrative units:
FHCL is Harvard College Library; RAD is Radcliffe Institute; and RAD.ARCH is Radcliffe Archives.
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