National Bibliography Number (URN:NBN)¶
NBN (National Bibliography Number) is a generic PID for digital publications. It uses the URN scheme and is therefore commonly referred to as URN:NBN.
The the National Library of Sweden (KB) provides registration services for Swedish organisations in the urn:nbn:se namespace.
Where to get started as a Swedish organisation?¶
| Use case | Contact | URL |
|---|---|---|
| Read about the Swedish national URN:NBN service | National Library: URN:NBN service information | https://www.kb.se/isbn-och-utgivning/urnnbn.html |
| Request a new organisational namespace for the Swedish national URN:NBN service | National Library: URN:NBN service contact e-mail | e-plikt@kb.se |
PID Parameters¶
| Parameter | Value | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | National Bibliography Number | |
| Abbreviated name | NBN, URN:NBN | |
| Intended use | Publications and certain other digital objects | Articles, reports, theses, student essays etc. Acts as a fallback identifier for publications which did not receive another primary identifier from a publisher or infrastructure. |
| Based on other PID system(s) | No | |
| Example | urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-80554 | |
| Example with resolver #1 | https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn%3Anbn%3Ase%3Alnu%3Adiva-80554 | https://urn.kb.se/ is the national resolver for the Swedish urn:nbn:se namespace. |
| Example with resolver #2 | https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-80554 | |
| Case sensitive | No | While not being case sensitive by design, lower case is expected in practical use to avoid confusion. |
| General resolver | http://nbn-resolving.org | If not in the urn:nbn:de or urn:nbn:ch namespaces, this general resolver only redirects requests to other national resolvers. If a resolver is down, this might fail. |
| May use custom resolver | Yes, mandatory | The infrastructure is based on national resolvers serving their respective namespaces. |
| Accompanying metadata kernel | No | |
| Inception | 2001 | |
| Standard | RFC 8458 | https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8458 |
| Standard | RFC 3188 | https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3188 |
| Documentation | URN-Service - Dokumentation | https://wiki.dnb.de/display/URNSERVDOK/URN-Resolver+API (in German) |
| Wikipedia article | National Bibliography Number | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bibliography_Number |
| Wikidata Q-ID | Q3873059 | https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3873059 |
| Wikidata P-ID | P4109 | https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P4109 |
PID Ecosystem¶
| Component | Name | URL |
|---|---|---|
| PID Scheme | URN:NBN | https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8458 |
| PID Authority | RFC-based (Internet Engineering Task Force) | https://rfc-editor.org/ |
| PID Standards Body | RFC-based (Internet Engineering Task Force) | https://rfc-editor.org/ |
| PID Provider | (National namespace providers. In Sweden: the National Library (KB)) | |
| PID Manager | (Handled by organisations within each sub-namespace) |