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The only prerequisite is to fill out an online request for a NAAN on behalf of your organization. There is no charge to obtain a NAAN and all memory organizations are welcome. Within a day or two you should receive an email containing a NAAN for your organization's exclusive use. Meanwhile consider the following.
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To convert ordinary web server processes into ARK-aware processes, all you difference between providing access to ARK-identified objects vs URL-identified is like with providing access for ordinary URL-identified objects. For example, you could run all your own 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 convert 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 end of the spectrum, you could work with a vendor that supplies all the infrastructure so that, for example, you could 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).
If you run a resolver, you will also want to think about whether to advertise (publish) your ARKs based at your resolver or at n2t.net. Resolving through n2t.net is always possible as a cost-free side-effect of obtaining a NAAN.
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People operating with software regularly turn simple human error into big tangles of systematic mistakes, even at the threshold of commitment. Making it difficult to clean them up requires dragging those messes forward in perpetuity.
Not perfect in this respectWhile not immune from such mistakes, ARKs still have the a big advantage that they can be created and deleted in the shadows, independent of publication or of archival commitment.
Can an object have both an ARK and a DOI?
Yes. Sometimes this having two identifiers is useful, although it can become confusing if 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 understand if 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. This is a way in which ARKs support early object development.
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Unlike Crossref and DataCite DOIs, which require specific metadata (eg, see the DataCite schema), ARKs do not constrain any of these activities. The Moreover the N2T.net resolver actually supports all of them.
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