This 70 page PDF Implementing Persistent Identifiers is a nice overview of identifier schemes.

Chapter 4 is about The Handle System which has been integrated with Globus and is also now a dev.globus incubator project. It provides a powerful set of secure identifier/metadata resolution and administration tools for grids.

The report’s concluding chapter makes no specific implementation recommendation, one of the main reason’s being that “none of these systems ensure persistence: persistence can only be achieved by administrative commitment.”