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- digital content, such as genealogical records (FamilySearch)
- publisher content (Portico)
- digitized manuscripts (Gallica)
- texts (Internet Archive)
- museum holdings (Smithsonian)
- vocabulary terms (yamz.net, perio.do)
- historical figures (snaccooperative.org)
- datasets, journals, living beings, and more.
Getting started
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What do I need to create ARKs?
The main thing you need is a NAAN, which is a 5-digit number that uniquely identifies your organization. It needs to will appear after the "ark:/" label at the beginning of every ARK assigned by that your organization assigns. In these ARKs,
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the NAAN (Name Assigning Authority Number) , is 12148, which uniquely identifies the French National Library. There is no charge to obtain or use a NAAN. To request a new NAAN, you may fill out an online request form. Over 500 organizations – organizations have NAANs – libraries, archives, museums, university departments, government agencies, scholarly and educational publishers, etc. – have NAANs.
How do I start assigning and advertising my ARKs?
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all listed in the public NAAN registry.
What
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kinds of things can I assign ARKs to?
To anything digital, physical, abstract, or groups thereof. This often includes things that don't yet exist but that you need to reference from objects that you're in the process of creating or planning, such as a link from a draft article to a dataset under preparation, or a link from an archived digital letter to a planned finding aid.
One caveat is that you should generally assign ARKs to things that you own, control, or manage. ARKs, or any identifiers, that you assign to things you don't control are discouraged as they tend to be fragile.
Can I assign ARKs to things inside of other things that already have ARKs?
Yes, you can assign ARKs at any level of granularity, such as to a manuscript, to its chapters, and to chapter sections, subsections, etc. As mentioned, you can also assign ARKs to groups of things.
The ARK scheme reserves the character '/' to help the recipient understand if one thing is contained within another thing. (A related character, '.', is reserved to help the recipient understand if one thing is a variant of the another.)
Are there tools and services to help with ARKs?
There's a partial list of software tools for persistent identification that includes
- Noid (Nice Opaque Identifiers), open source software for minting and resolving ARKs on your own
- ARK plugin for Omeka, which creates and manages ARKs for the Omeka open source web-publishing platform
- ARK module for Drupal, which allows your Drupal site to act as a Name Mapping Authority (NMA)
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How do I start serving my ARKs?
It's like serving ordinary URLs. Incoming Ordinary incoming URL strings address (get mapped to) content that you return, and if your resolver redirects ARKs to those URLs, you're all set. If you're dealing directly with incoming ARK strings, you can map (convert) them to a form . If your server is ARK-aware, the ARKs (expressed as URLs) are mapped to the same content, but in a way that is more stable than ordinary URLs. an alternate way to address the same content, except that they should always get to the content when . redirects ARKs to those URLs, you're all set. If you're dealing directly with incoming ARK strings, you can map (convert) them to a form your server handles (eg, map them to URLs on arrival). In this second case, your server is acting as a local resolver.
If you choose to run your own ARK infrastructure, you get complete autonomy at the expense of maintaining a server/resolver. On the one hand, you might run all custom infrastructure – including content management, web hosting, minting (generating unique identifier strings), and running your own server/resolver. That infrastructure could be very simple, such as server configured to map incoming ARK-based URLs to server file pathnames. When you request your NAAN you will be asked to supply the base URL of your local server or resolver.
At the other extreme, you might work with a vendor that supplies all the infrastructure so that, for example, you can focus on creating content. Hybrid solutions are also common, such as just taking your current web server arrangement and just adding an identifier management piece (eg, the API/UI provided by ezid.cdlib.org, which partners with n2t.net).You will also want to think about whether to advertise (release, publish, disseminate) your ARKs based at your resolver or at n2t.net. You might choose the former for branding or the latter for stability. Resolving your ARKs through n2t.net is always possible, regardless of how you advertise them (this is a side-effect of obtaining a NAAN) n2t.net).
You will also want to think about whether to advertise (release, publish, disseminate) your ARKs based at your resolver or at n2t.net. You might choose the former for branding or the latter for stability. Resolving your ARKs through n2t.net is always possible, regardless of how you advertise them (this is a side-effect of obtaining a NAAN).
to anything digital, physical, abstract, etc. This often includes things that don't yet exist but that you need to reference from objects that you're in the process of creating or planning, such as a link from a draft article to a dataset under preparation, or a link from an archival object to a planned finding aid.
How do I start resolving my ARKs?
One caveat is that you should generally assign ARKs to things that you own, control, or manage. ARKs, or any identifiers, that you assign to things you don't control will tend to be fragile.
- Will you assign ARKs to things contained in larger things that have ARKs? This (granularity) is not a problem, and the '/' character may help.
- Where do you want your ARKs to resolve to? Examples: formatted file, surrogate for a physical thing, landing page with choices, etc.
- Which web server will host your objects? You are asked this when you request a NAAN, even if it's not yet working.
- Which web server/resolver will you use as hostname in the ARK-based URLs that you advertise/publish?
Are there tools and services to help with ARKs?
There's a partial list of software tools for persistent identification that includes
- Noid (Nice Opaque Identifiers), open source software for minting and resolving ARKs on your own
- ARK plugin for Omeka, which creates and manages ARKs for the Omeka open source web-publishing platform
- ARK module for Drupal, which allows your Drupal site to act as a Name Mapping Authority (NMA)
There are also some vendors, such as ezid.cdlib.org, and some more information on concepts and best practices.
What is a NAAN, and can I make changes to it?
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Yes. Sometimes having two identifiers is useful, although it can become confusing when it happens often. Many people start by assigning ARKs to each thing they create in order to have a stable reference right from the beginning, even before they know whether they want to publish it, let alone keep it.
Starting with an ARK, you benefit from being able to keep the original identifier from birth through to public release as the object and its metadata matures. For the subset of things that you end up wanting to publish in places that require DOIs, you can assign DOIs at publication time. If your ARK is stable and has basic metadata, you're already doing everything you need to have a proper DOI. This is a way in which ARKs support early object development.
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