ARK Alliance

The next ARK (Archival Resource Key) Community Call will take place on Thursday, 7 May 2026 at 0800 PDT / 1100 EDT / 1500 UTC.

Zoom registration link: https://unt.zoom.us/meeting/register/q8J0SUHnS5SkVnaLAqXTzQ

Everyone is welcome to join this 1-hour meeting, which is part of a series of open calls engaging the broader community interested in using ARK persistent identifiers (PIDs). The draft agenda (https://github.com/arks-org/arks.github.io/wiki/2026-05-07-Open-ARK-Community-Call-Agenda-and-Notes) includes open discussion.

2025 has been a great year for the ARK Alliance. The 1720+ ARK organizations include 12 national libraries, 215 universities, 254 archives, 144 museums, 124 journals, and 59 scientific centers.

https://arks.org/news/2025-12-15-wrapping-up-2025-with-1720-ark-organizations/

Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) announced in November 2025 that LA Referencia will receive up to US$1.5M in funding as one of the inaugural winners of the IOI Network Adoption Fund. https://arks.org/news/2025-12-12-ioi-supports-la-referencia-and-dark/

In September the ARK Alliance (arks.org) will convert its documentation practices to align with modern form ARKs, the most visible difference being removal of the slash ('/') at the end of "ark:/". This is a non-breaking change -- two ARKs that differ only in form are considered equivalent in perpetuity. Details at https://arks.org/news/2025-07-28-documentation-change-from-classic-to-modern-arks/