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1. Long-term access to objects and items of interest to researchers, scholars, collectors, and others, is notoriously difficult to ensure. People and things move and links rot.

2. Persistent linking systems are available, but expensive.

3. And, they those systems impose their own metadata and other requirements, instead of letting users supply their own.

Solution

1. ARKs exist to provide long-term access to information objects.

2. ARKs are affordable: there are no fees to assign or use ARKs. And, you can host ARKs on your own web server , because for example, with help from the Noid (Nice Opaque Identifiers) is open  open source software.

3. ARKs are flexible: In some ways, ARKs can be thought of as a “one-size-fits-all,” in that they perfectly fit simple as well as complex use cases.

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• Publish the ARK specification through the Informational RFC process
• Number of subscribers to ARK mailing list
• Process for assigning majority of ARK NAANs is automated
• Number of code contributors to N2T’s Eggnog (successor to Noid) code baseand other tools
• Number of ARK integration projects for library and repository systems in GitHub
• Number of N2T clients in GitHub
• Number of N2T replicas maintained around the world

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• Technical Leads/Managers
• Programmers/Developers
• Digital Preservation Experts
• Metadata Experts
• Genealogists
• Digital Librarians

Contributor Channels

• *Expressions of Interest*
• Users
• Event networking
• Advisory Group
• Regular communication (outreach)
• Referrals
• EZID promotion

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• Implementations can consist mostly of off-the-shelf technologies.

• ARKs pioneered persistence statements that can reflect variations in persistence policy, including a limited lifespan.

• Open infrastructure: unlike other persistent identifiers, ARKs don't lock you into one specific, often fee-based, management and resolution infrastructure.

• ARK syntax uniquely supports relationship analyses of groups of ARKs, as might be conducted over search results to make collapsing or expanding them fast and powerful.   

• “Inflections”: special characters (?, ??) at end of an ARK string will bring back an ARK’s metadata. This means you don’t need a programmer’s help.

• “Suffix passthrough”: a special technique that allows you to register one ARK to have usable persistent links to thousands of your objects. This means a huge savings in time and attention for you!