The ARK Identifier Scheme
John Kunze · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2019
The ARK (Archival Resource Key) naming scheme is designed to facilitate the high-quality and persistent identification of information objects. A founding principle of the ARK is that persistence is purely a matter of service and is neither inherent in an object nor conferred on it by a particular naming syntax. The best that an identifier can do is to lead users to the services that support robust reference. The term ARK itself refers both to the scheme and to any single identifier that conforms to it. An ARK has five components: