How can handles benefit the researcher and the publisher?
By using handles the researcher is assured that data on the Web will be preserved and electronically available for a long period of time. The goal is to preserve the information, ensure access to it and eliminate broken links. The assignment of handles to DTIC’s full text publicly releasable technical reports may have no meaning to researchers who accesses electronic documents through DTIC’s Scientific and Technical Information Network (STINET) database; the fulltext is retrieved from the Technical Report (TR) Bibliographic database by a click. However, STINET resources do resolve through the Handle System®. A typical DTIC URL is very lengthy; access to DTIC documents from a Web browser outside the STINET system is much simpler using a handle which, used with the DTIC handle proxy server address, dramatically shortens the URL. An example of a handle embedded in the DTIC proxy URL is: http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA475594. Enter the DTIC proxy URL and the known handle (prefix + suffix)
