Purpose

The Technical Working Group (WG) oversees development and maintenance of specifications, software, and servers that support infrastructure for the ARKs-in-the-Open (AITO) community. Examples include ARK standardization, code for counting ARKs, and global resolver replication.

Objectives

1. Standardization. Review the ARK specification so that the authors, who are WG members, can finalize it and submit it to the IETF for publication as an Internet RFC.

2. NAAN procedures. Adapt current CDL procedures for updating NAANs and registering new NAANs so that these maintenance activities can be shared by the community, eg, on github. (The NAAN registry that CDL currently maintains is a text file of globally unique 5-digit Name Assigning Authority Numbers (NAANs) reserved for organizations that wish to assign ARKs.)

3. Counting ARKs. Work with the Outreach Working Group to implement mechanisms to measure ARK usage world-wide.

Deliverables

• Kickoff: clarify objectives and assign roles for (a) standardization and (b) NAAN procedures designers; spec authors articulate areas they think are problematic

• Months 1-9: several rounds of review, feedback, and revision for (a) and (b), including public review via the arks-forum list; NAAN procedures are piloted

• Months 10-12: feedback and review of '?info' inflection for returning human- and machine-readable metadata; ARK spec submitted to IETF

• Months 13-15: recruit NAAN registry workers; deal with spec feedback from the IETF

• Months 16-18: further refinements to procedures; “counting ARKs” project design and prototyping then begins

• Months 19-20: counting ARKs prototype is tested

• Month 21: updated WG objectives and deliverables for the coming year, with an accordingly updated overall AITO roadmap

Resources

• Current ARK spec: http://n2t.net/e/arkspec.txt

• Current NAAN registry: http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/naan_registry.txt

• Global ARK (and other identifiers) resolver, N2T (Name-to-Thing): https://n2t.net

• Notes from ARK "Experts" meetings in 2018, with discussions of surveys, ARK spec changes, counting ARKs, sustainability, etc

• Outreach WG and Sustainability WG

• General WG features common across AITO working groups

• AITO roadmap

• Persistence Statements: Describing Digital Stickiness:   https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-039

Working Group Members

• Emmanuelle Bermes BnF

• Bertrand Caron BnF (AG Liaison, Co-chair for NAANs)

• Tom Creighton Family Search (Co-chair for Counting)
• Adrien Di Mascio Toucan Toco
• Karen Hanson Portico
• Greg Janée UC Santa Barbara
• Cillian Joy National University of Ireland, Galway

• John Kunze California Digital Library (AG Liaison, Co-chair for Specification)

• Roxana Maurer National Library of Luxembourg
• Curtis Mirci University of Utah
• Sheila Morrissey Portico, emeritus
• Mark Phillips University of North Texas
• Julien Antoine Raemy HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland

Meeting Times

Teleconferences are generally held twice a month, 17:00-18:00 UTC, on the first and third Mondays. Connection details included in calendar invitations.

Communication Channels

aito-technical-wg@googlegroups.com, archived at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/aito-technical-wg

Agendas and Notes