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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
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a thing that already
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has an ARK?
Yes, you ARKs can assign ARKs be assigned at any level of granularity, such as to a manuscript, to its chapters inside it, and to chapter sections, subsections, etc. As mentioned, you An ARK can also assign ARKs to groups of things.The ARK scheme reserves be assigned to a thing that encloses other things. In ARKs the character '/' is reserved 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.)about containment, for example, the first ARK below contains the second ARK:
Can I assign ARKs to alternative forms of a thing?
Yes, two ARKs that differ only by a suffix are considered variant forms of the same thing. The character '.' is reserved to help the recipient understand that, for example, these two ARKs identify two different formats of the same document:
ark:/12148/btv1b8449691v/f29.pdf
ark:/12148/btv1b8449691v/f29.html
How do I start serving my ARKs?
It's like serving ordinary URLs. Ordinary incoming URL strings address (get mapped to) content that you return. 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).
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.
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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.
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