What are ARKs?
ARKs (Archival Resource Keys) are high-functioning identifiers that lead you to things and to descriptions of those things. For example, this ARK,
https://n2t.net/ark:/67531/metadc107835/
gets to a dissertation, and adding a '?' to the ARK gets you to its description:
https://n2t.net/ark:/67531/metadc107835/?
What's an identifier?
On the internet, an identifier is a URL, or part of a URL. For example, this basic ARK identifier,
is part of two different URLs (Uniform Resource Locators, or web addresses):
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449691v/f29
https://n2t.net/ark:/12148/btv1b8449691v/f29
ARKs are especially good at being persistent identifiers.
What's a persistent identifier?
The average lifetime of a URL has been said to be 44 days. At the end of its life, a published URL will give you the dreaded 404 Not Found error. As irritating as that is for most of us, it's a disaster for libraries, archives, museums, and other memory organizations. They want to publish persistent identifiers, which should in principle continue to work far into the future. Accurately predicting the future is, of course, not possible, but persistent identifiers can help.
How do ARKs differ from DOIs, Handles, PURLs, and URNs?
They are all major kinds of persistent identifiers. The short answer is that ARKs are the the only mainstream, non-siloed, non-paywalled identifiers. Over 500 registered organizations have created an estimated 3.2 billion ARKs in the world, and no one has ever paid for the right to create them.
Would you be able to expand that answer?
Superficially, these identifiers all have similar structure and purpose.
xxxxx
I've heard of ORCIDs and UUIDs – where do they fit in?
Those are special kinds of persistent identifiers. ORCIDs identify researchers, and they link to research works using ARKs, DOIs, etc. ORCIDs look like
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7604-8041
UUIDs are globally unique, 37-character strings that are easy to generate but only become usable as web addresses when made part of a URL, ARK, DOI, etc, for example,
https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/3c2e39526-e0c3-41ae-be4f-07558a9458eb
