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What a timely discussion. In the morning, Montana State Library will be attempting to answer the question: do we need to continue making permanent URLs to access our state pubs collection? It's not clear to me what the handiness of permanent URLs is. Just tried a PURL from our Montana state pubs collection. What appears in the address bar for bookmarking when the resource is access is NOT the PURL id but the target URL at the Internet Archive? According to a recent post here on a similar topic, John Kunze, the creative developer of ARKs, said for permanency to take place, one needs a reserve access repository in place. So, we set up and maintain PURLS at purl.org for a long-term horizon say 50 years. We setup a reserve repository. We create a bridge table for redirecting our targets from IA to the reserve repository when we need it. If we need the reserve targets, we modify the PURLS at purl.org. It takes two days, which is OK for legacy state publication because the current ones are still online. Are we are good to go for fifty years from now when a move is needed? In the meantime, the reserve repository fails, or purl.org fails, or nothing fails, but URL technology changes or repository technology changes. What we actually need 50 years from now is nothing like we have set up to help us make the transition to reserve repository. So, maintenance of permanency is more than creating permanent URLs, it means keeping up with 50 years of obsolescence. Why not tend to the links in our catalog. Plan in a detailed way to shift to a reserve repository understanding the target links required. Change this plan every time obsolescence rears its ugly head. When the plan is needed, do it. If there are still URLs, generate the new target list and the bridge table from current records if there is still such a thing. Overlay the records and be good to go with whatever actually is needed at the time its need? Say it take 30 days to do this. This would probably be OK for state publications. In the meantime, save time and money creating and maintaining permanent URLs that will be obsolete when we need them. What am I missing?