The ARK Identifier Scheme

The ARK (Archival Resource Key) naming scheme is designed to facilitate the high-quality and persistent identification of information objects. The label "ark:" marks the start of a core ARK identifier that can be made actionable by prepending the beginning of a URL. Meant to be usable after today's networking technologies become obsolete, that core should be recognizable in the future as a globally unique ARK independent of the URL hostname, HTTP, etc. A founding principle of ARKs is that persistence is purely a matter of service and neither inherent in an object nor conferred on it by a particular naming syntax. The best any identifier can do is lead users to services that support robust reference. A full-functioning ARK leads the user to the identified object and, with the "?info" inflection appended, returns a metadata record and a commitment statement that is both human- and machine-readable. Tools exist for minting, binding, and resolving ARKs. Responsibility for this Document The ARK Alliance Technical Working Group [ARKAtech] is responsible for the content of this Internet Draft. The group homepage lists monthly meeting notes and agendas starting from March 2019. Revisions of the spec are maintained on github at [ARKdrafts].