Purpose
The Technical Working Group (WG) oversees development and maintenance of specifications, software, and servers that support infrastructure for the ARK Alliance (ARKA) community. Examples include ARK standardization, code for counting ARKs, and global resolver replication.
Objectives
- Standardization. Review the ARK specification so that the authors, who are WG members, can finalize it and submit it to the IETF for publication as an Informational Internet RFC.
NAAN procedures. Adapt current CDL procedures for updating NAANs and registering new NAANs so that these maintenance activities can be shared by the community, eg, on github. (The NAAN registry that CDL currently maintains is a text file of globally unique 5-digit Name Assigning Authority Numbers (NAANs) reserved for organizations that wish to assign ARKs.)
- Global ARK resolver. Guide the development and hosting of the N2T.net resolver.
Counting ARKs. Work with the Outreach Working Group to implement mechanisms to measure ARK usage world-wide.
Deliverables
Kickoff: clarify objectives and assign roles for (a) standardization and (b) NAAN procedures designers; spec authors articulate areas they think are problematic
- Recruit NAAN registry curators
- Design and review '?info' inflection for returning human- and machine-readable metadata
- Establish NAAN request form to generate NAAN entries at N2T
- Submit ARK spec to IETF RFC process and respond to feedback with revisions
Prototype counting ARKs project
Resources
2008 ARK spec: http://n2t.net/e/arkspec.txt
- 2022 ARK spec: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-kunze-ark-34
Current NAAN registry: https://n2t.net/e/pub/naan_registry.txt
Global ARK (and other identifiers) resolver, N2T (Name-to-Thing): https://n2t.net
Notes from ARK "Experts" meetings in 2018, with discussions of surveys, ARK spec changes, counting ARKs, sustainability, etc
General WG features common across ARKA working groups
Persistence Statements: Describing Digital Stickiness: https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-039
Working Group Members
- Emmanuelle Bermes BnF
Bertrand Caron BnF (AG Liaison, Co-chair for NAANs)
- Tom Creighton Family Search
- Karen Hanson Portico
- Greg Janée UC Santa Barbara
John Kunze California Digital Library (AG Liaison, Co-chair for Specification)
- Roxana Maurer National Library of Luxembourg
- Curtis Mirci University of Utah
- Mark Phillips University of North Texas
- Amir Alwash HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland
- Dave Vieglais Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, University of Kansas
Meeting Times
Teleconferences are generally held once a month, 09:00-10:00 San Francisco time, on the second Tuesday. Connection details included in calendar invitations.
Communication Channels
arka-technical-wg@googlegroups.com, archived at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/arka-technical-wg
IETF discussion list: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ark