8. Creating a Naming Authority

LTS has pre-created top-level Naming Authorities, corresponding to main administrative units of Harvard University. Using NRS Admin, it is possible to define child- or sub-authorities under these top-level Naming Authorities. NRS users who have the 'Lead' role for a Naming Authority are able to create child authorities for that Naming Authority. For instance, if a staff member has the Lead role for HUL.ARCH, the staff member would be authorized to create HUL.ARCH.2020 or HUL.ARCH.ANNUAL.

LTS recommends that NRS users avoid defining multi-level Naming Authorities loaded with organizational meaning. In practice, this means defining a Naming Authority only at the tub level ("FHCL" rather than "FHCL.Widener"). Collections do move and organization-specific Naming Authorities become confusing if the collections they refer to are moved from one library to another. LTS also recommends that Naming Authorities have no more than three levels: top-level, child, grandchild.

This is the procedure for creating an authority path under the top-level. The operator performing this procedure must have the "authority" role relative to the authority path under which the child authority will be defined.

Connect to NRS Web Admin.

Production: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL:nrs-admin
QA/test: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL:nrs-admin-qa

From the main menu, select Naming Authorities and then Delegate.

Select the urn-3 namespace.

From the drop-down list, select the authority path under which you will define a child- or sub-authority and click the Select button.

Enter information for the child authority path and click the Delegate button.

Path name: can be up to 7 characters long and composed of alpha-numeric characters and the following punctuation characters: ( ) + , - = @ ; $ _ ! * '

NRS will retain upper and lower case letter selections, but note that the NRS resolver is not case sensitive. I.e., the NRS resolver will treat the authority paths "HUL.TEST", "HUL.Test", and "hul.test" as the same.

Administrator: the 8 digit HUID of the operator given the authority role for this new sub-authority. This operator would be identified as the local NRS administrator for this authority path on the NRS Status Page. Leave this field blank and administrative responsibility is implicitly passed to the administrator of the parent authority.

Max. Depth: specifies the number of levels of sub-authorities that will be allowed beneath the new authority.

Max. Breadth: specifies the number of sibling authorities that will be allowed at each level sub-authority.

Status: an authority path must be Active for the persistent identifiers defined under it to be available for resolution.

Persistent identifiers can be created under a new child authority path as soon as it is defined. But note that new persistent identifiers are passed to the NRS resolver overnight (i.e., new persistent identifiers will work in a browser the day after they are created).