EZID: easy identifier and metadata management

EZID (pronounced easy-eye-dee at ezid.cdlib.org) is an innovative service supporting the creation and management of identifiers, their accompanying metadata, and long-term access to things on the Internet. It is one of the few services that can supply a diversity of identifier and metadata types, and do so at the earliest stages of content development, long before the content is archived or its value is understood. EZID is run by a team within the California Digital Library (CDL), which serves the libraries of the ten campuses of the University of California, partners with national libraries, maintains the ARK identifier scheme, and belongs to global identifier organizations such as DataCite and CrossRef (FIG. 1). Started in 2010, EZID now has over 100 customers on three continents and users on all continents. In fact it is the largest and fastest growing member of the DataCite consortium. The EZID user interface is currently being revised to support multiple languages.