ARKs in the Open: Project Update #4 on the ARK Identifier Summit and Experts Day

The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) organized an ARK Identifier Summit followed by an ARK Experts Day in Paris last week. The California Digital Library’s John Kunze, Identifier Systems Architect and creator of ARKs, was invited to give the opening keynote (“The Covenant of the ARK”) at the Summit and lead the Experts Day.

“The venue was packed all day with fantastic energy and diverse perspectives from publishing, research, archives, and libraries. The organizers and presenters were all outstanding and I was very honored to participate in this exciting event” said Kunze.BnF was an early adopter of ARKs and many French-speaking institutions followed their lead. For example, almost forty francophone organizations joined the ARK community in 2017.The ARK Summit had more than 250 people attend, selling out the auditorium as well as an overflow room. The Experts Day tabled half a dozen proposals and featured discussion by a small group of invested stakeholders. Both events signaled a big step forward toward creating a community around ARK implementation.The discussions included details on the ARKs in the Open initiative as well as other topics important to ARK users, such as:

• Modifications to the ARK specification and preparing to submit the ARK specification as an IETF Informational RFC,
• How to track the number of minted ARKs world-wide
• Planning to test the use of persistence statements, and
• Developing a survey to gauge the priorities and challenges of ARK users.

In addition to excellent conversation, the events in Paris bolstered support for the ARKs in the Open project.

The list of organizations expressing interest in the project is growing:

• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg
• Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas – Argentina
• The British Library
• Family Search International
• Institut Internationale de la Marionnette
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Portico
• Sempiternelia
• Texas A&M University Libraries
• University College Dublin
• University of California, San Francisco
• University of Houston Libraries
• University of Maryland
• University of North Texas
• University of Utah

If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in this project, please sign up for the ARK mailing list, http://bit.ly/2o7aNew or visit our wiki. To express interest in the ARKs in the Open project, please fill out this form, http://bit.ly/2C4fU8f.