Every ARK organization has a Name Assigning Authority Number (NAAN) listed in the public NAAN registry. Usually the NAAN representing a Name Assigning Authority (NAA) is a 5-digit number, but sometimes it is a shoulder, which is a few characters longer (e.g., “12345/x5”). As of , there are NAAs in the public registry.
Each NAAN record includes the local organizational resolver to which the global Name-to-Thing (N2T.net) resolver will redirect ARKs that come in with that NAAN. Most ARKs, however, are published as URLs based at the local resolver (server) domain name, bypassing the global resolver.
The range of top-level domains – the final part of the domain name – across all local ARK resolvers is shown below. There is also a simple NAAN registry search interface.
The next chart shows the number of newly registered NAANs per year. Click on a TLD slice above to update the NAANs registered per year in the chart below for that TLD.
Any memory organization can start creating ARKs once it obtains a NAAN, which may be requested at no cost by filling out the NAAN request form. The most recently registered ARK organizations appear below.
Page concept and JavaScript credit: Bob Coret, National Library of the Netherlands