The ARK Alliance community comprises institutions and people who use or assign ARK identifiers as well as those interested in promoting ARKs and sustaining the open ARK infrastructure, which consists of standards, best practices, the N2T.net resolver, and the registry of ARK organizations. There is also an Archival Resource Key Community Code of Conduct.

Global distribution of over 1250 ARK organizations.

The ARK Alliance emerged from a collaboration between the California Digital Library and DuraSpace/LYRASIS. Launched in 2018, it has gained the support of 44 institutions. Since 2021 the ARK Alliance has been a member of the NDSA, an international consortium committed to the long-term preservation of digital information.

How to get involved

1. Join a discussion group (in English) or 🇫🇷 liste de discussion (francophone)
2. Follow the ARK Alliance on twitter @arks_org
3. Follow us on mastodon @arks_org@fosstodon.org
4. Read the ARK Alliance blog
5. Sign up for our newsletter
6. Submit a community news item or blog post using this online news form; you can use this story template to help create your content
7. Tell us about yourself by filling out a 5-minute ARK survey (in English) or 🇫🇷 une enquête ARK (version française)
8. Tell us about your interest in helping with the work of the ARK Alliance
9. Contact us about joining a working group: Outreach, Registry, Technical, Advisory

Who is creating ARKs

Since 2001 over 1250 organizations across the world registered to assign ARKs. As of early 2024, the registry includes 10 national libraries, 145 universities, 184 archives, 90 museums, and 75 journals, as well as many other organization types (data centers, government agencies, vendors, research labs, etc). To register your organization, fill out this online request form.

What ARKs are being assigned to (February 2023):

• genealogical records (8 billion FamilySearch)
• publisher content (100 million Portico)
• scanned texts (30 million Internet Archive)
• scientific records (22 million INIST)
• bibliographic records (27 million BnF main catalog)
• museum specimens (11 million going on 100 million Smithsonian)
• public health documents, many from legal discovery (15 million UCSF IDL)
• digitized documents and objects (6 million BnF Gallica)
• historical persons, families, and organizations (4 million SNACC)
• finding aids and special collections (4 million Merritt)
• library and archival objects (1.3 million Durham University Library)
• educational resources (1.1 million University of Utah)
• fine art (483,000 Louvre museum)
• historic maps (334,000 Princeton University Libraries)
• vocabulary terms (27,000 Periodo, YAMZ)
• datasets, journals, archeological artifacts, living beings, etc.

We continue to receive expressions of interest and have attracted support from the following 44 institutions on 4 continents:

• Australian National Data Service
• Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg
• The British Library
• Caltech (California Institute of Technology)
• City University of New York
• Colectica
• Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas – Argentina
• Crossref
• DaSCH, Swiss National Data & Service Center for the Humanities
• DeSci Labs
• ENIP – Universidad Autónoma de Nayarit
• Family Search International
• HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Haute école de gestion de Genève
• Indiana University
• Institut Internationale de la Marionnette
• Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
• Internet Archive
• Max Planck Institute for Art History – Bibliotheca Hertziana
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• National University of Ireland, Galway
• Penn State University
• Portico
• Sempiternelia
• Service interministériel des Archives de France
• Smithsonian Institution
• Texas A&M University Libraries
• Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)
• University College Dublin
• University of Arizona
• University of California, San Francisco
• University of Chicago
• University of Houston Libraries
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• University of Maryland
• University of North Texas
• University of Pennsylvania Libraries
• University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute
• University of Utah
• University of Virginia
• West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN)
• Zürcher Hochschule der Künste