The BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) is organizing an ARK Identifier Summit in Paris on March 21 of 2018. As maintenance agency for the ARK standard, the California Digital Library is helping to plan the event, which will be conducted in French. On March 22, there will be a small invitation-only “experts day” meeting conducted in English.
Like the University of California and EZID, the BnF was an early adopter of ARKs. Many French-speaking institutions followed their lead across the world — libraries, archives, museums, and publishers — at the national, regional, and municipal levels. Indeed, more than forty francophone organizations joined the ARK community in 2017. The ARK Summit aims to begin creating a community around ARK implementation questions. It is intended for experienced users as well as for potential users who plan to implement permalinks and want to get information about the advantages of using ARKs. In the morning will be a tutorial to get familiar with fundamental concepts and a presentation on ARK identifier history, benefits, best practices, and current trends. The afternoon will be devoted to users feedback from different professional sectors. Though this summit is targeted at a French-speaking audience, we thought the initiative in itself might be of interest to the digital curation and digital preservation community. It has already raised a lot of demand amongst the French-speaking community: new spaces have opened since the 200-person limit was increased to accommodate demand. The program is available at http://www.bnf.fr/fr/professionnels/anx_journees_pro_2018/a.jp_180321_ark.html. Note that the event is now fully booked, but will be recorded and available on the BnF website.shortly afterwards. Bertrand Caron Département des Métadonnées Bibliothèque nationale de France Quai François Mauriac 75706 Paris Cedex 13 01 53 79 42 23 bertrand.ca...@bnf.fr
