The ARK Alliance (ARKA) has working groups (WGs) focussed on general topic areas. Anyone may request to
join a working group by contacting one of its current members or writing to info@arks.org. The groups are introduced below.
Outreach Group
Purpose
The ARKA Outreach Working Group oversees development of the ARK Alliance community, as well as the promotion of awareness, understanding, and adoption of ARKs, the only major persistent identifier scheme that is open, decentralized, non-siloed, and non-paywalled.
There is an ARK Alliance Outreach Working Group wiki
for its supporting documents.
Objectives
- Develop strategies for gathering requirements, priorities, and models for shared
community and infrastructure management. Examples include ARK community survey draft
created by the BnF, organizing events such as the 2018 ARK summit, spreading the word
in international conferences, supporting the world map of ARK assigning organizations
updated via geo-locations in the NAAN registry, etc.
- Clearly articulate what ARKs are, how they can be used, and why they are essential
(the “value proposition”) and promote their adoption and use.
- Maintain and update the ARK Alliance website at arks.org and documentation at the n2t.net ARK resolver.
- Support the calendar of events and list of ARKA-related email groups.
- Develop ways to characterize ARK usage, such as surveys or an API permitting ARK organizations to self-report via a harvestable API endpoint.
- Develop training materials and videos.
- Oversee the information used to support ARKA working groups (currently Confluence wiki).
Deliverables
- public website maintenance and published blog posts
- newsletter and wikipedia page (ongoing)
- social media (such as Mastodon, Twitter, Discord, Zulip, Youtube)
- action plan to represent ARK-identified resources and Name Assigning Authorities in Wikidata
- maintain material (on arks.org) associated with getting started with ARKs
- plan for community to transition from v18 to the v37 specification
- canned presentations, slide shows, webinars
- translations of existing documents (e.g., https://francearchives.gouv.fr/fr/article/339695117)
- tool resource guides to promote ARK software (eg, OJS plugin)
- ARKA representation on NDSA and IIIF working groups
- move wiki and wordpress site to github pages
Resources
ARK Alliance Outreach Working Group Members
- Bertrand Caron, BnF (National Library of France)
- Carlos Authier, National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina
- Donny Winston, Polyneme LLC
- Jack OMalley, Frick Collection
- John Kunze, chair, Drexel University Metadata Research Center
- Julien Antoine Raemy, Data and Service Center for the Humanities (DaSCH)
- Lesley Frew, Old Dominion University
- Omo Oaiya, WACREN
- Riccardo Ferrante, Smithsonian Institution Libraries and Archives
- Sergio Santamarina, University of José C Paz, Argentina
Technical Group
Purpose
The ARKA Technical Working Group oversees development and maintenance of specifications, software, and servers that support infrastructure for the ARK Alliance community. Examples include ARK standardization, code for counting ARKs, and global resolver replication.
There is an ARK Alliance Technical Working Group wiki
for its supporting documents.
Objectives
- Standardization. Work with standards bodies (IETF, NISO, W3C, etc) to adopt the ARK spec.
- Design and review ‘?info’ inflection for returning human- and machine-readable metadata.
- Global ARK resolver. Guide the development and hosting of the N2T.net resolver.
- Counting ARKs. Work with the Outreach Working Group to implement mechanisms (eg, surveys, APIs) to measure ARK usage world-wide.
- Support the Outreach WG in a liaison with the IIIF community.
- Work with standards bodies (IETF, NISO, W3C, etc) to adopt the ARK spec.
Deliverables
- A declarative schema (e.g. JSON Schema) for NAAN entry record, for validation.
- schema definition
- adjusted tooling to work with schema
- tool to generate the ANVL format from json for 3rd party consumers
- Transition to new ARK spec.
- Spin off a Persistence Statements group (charter, timeline)
- Investigate moving arks.org from a Wordpress site to a github pages site
- Move lyrasis confluence wiki content to github.
Resources
ARK Alliance Technical Working Group Members
- Emmanuelle Bermes, École des Chartes
- Bertrand Caron, BnF
- Randy Wilson, FamilySearch
- Karen Hanson, Portico
- Greg Janée, UC Santa Barbara
- John Kunze, chair, Drexel University Metadata Research Center
- Lautaro Matas, LA Referencia
- Roxana Maurer, National Library of Luxembourg
- Curtis Mirci, University of Utah
- Mark Phillips, University of North Texas
- Dave Vieglais, co-chair, Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, University of Kansas
- Donny Winston Polyneme LLC
NAAN Group
The ARKA NAAN Registry Working Group oversees the registry of institutions that have been given a Name Assigning Authority Number (NAAN), with which they can begin assigning ARKs. The work consists mostly of responding to requests for new NAANs, but also to requests for changes to existing NAANs. Effectively the WG is a team of volunteer curators whose work will be ongoing. Although the WG is not expected ever to be finished, composition of the curatorial team is expected to evolve year to year.
There is an ARK Alliance NAAN Working Group wiki
for its supporting documents (this wiki is unfortunately not open due to PII concerns).
Objectives
- NAA maintenance. Create and refine processes that permit each NAAN request
and Shoulder request to receive a response within two business days.
- Policy. In consultation with the Advisory Group, develop
policies for deciding which requests are
appropriate for the ARK community.
- N2T resolution support. The NAAN Registry is harvested regularly to supply vital redirection
information to the N2T resolver. Work with the Technical WG to ensure stable, error-free harvesting
of registry information needed for continuous and reliable resolution.
Deliverables
- Create a policy document
- Work with CDL to implement form processing changes (agreed upon in March 2022)
- Recruit new curators
- Convert to github projects
- Monthly meetings facilitated by the current primary or secondary curator (rotating duties)
Resources
ARK Alliance NAAN Working Group Members
- Aurélien Conraux, co-chair, French Ministry of Culture
- Bertrand Caron BnF (National Library of France)
- Chloé Pochon French National Institute of Art History
- Brian McBride, chair, University of Utah
- Jennifer Marill, US National Library of Medicine (retired)
- John Kunze, Drexel University Metadata Research Center
- John Chodacki, CDL
- Romuald Verrier, French Ministry of Education
- Sefakor Ankora, WACREN
Advisory Group
The ARKA Advisory Group (AG) will provide a means for transitioning the ARK infrastructure
(specification, NAAN registry, resolver) from the California Digital Library (CDL) to a community
supported and managed activity. Planning is underway for an initial meeting of the group
to review the goals, proposed timetable and roles drafted so far, as well as to launch
working groups dedicated to pursuing objectives related to outreach, technical best
practices, and sustainability. There is an
ARK Alliance Advisory Working Group wiki
for its supporting documents.
ARK Alliance Advisory Group members:
- John Chodacki, California Digital Library (CDL)
- Ricc Ferrante, Smithsonian Institution Libraries and Archives
- Emmanuel Jaslier, BnF (National Library of France), alternate Bertrand Caron
- Martin Kalfatovic, IIIF Consortium
- John Kunze, Drexel University Metadata Research Center
- Brian McBride, University of Utah
- Mark Phillips, chair, University of North Texas Libraries
- Kate Wittenberg, Portico
Guided by the Mozilla Foundation’s Open Leadership Framework, LYRASIS and CDL constituted
this body by reaching out to those organizations that filled out our Expression of Interest form.