Hi Ethan,

I'm hoping Mark Phillips or one of his colleagues from UNT will respond,
but they have implemented ARK inflections. For example, compare:

http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth5828/
http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth5828/?
http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth5828/??

In particular, the challenges posed by inflections are described in this
DC2014 paper [0] by Sébastien Peyrard and Jean-Philippe Tramoni from the
BNF and John A. Kunze from CDL.

[0] http://dcpapers.dublincore.org/pubs/article/view/3704/1927

Cheers,
Mark


--
Mark A. Matienzo <[log in to unmask]>
Director of Technology, Digital Public Library of America

On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 2:36 PM, Ethan Gruber <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I was recently reading the wikipedia article for Archival Resource Keys
> (ARKs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_Resource_Key), and there was
> a
> bit of functionality that a resource is supposed to deliver that we don't
> in our system, nor do any other systems that I've seen that implement ARK
> URIs.
>
> From the article:
>
> "An ARK contains the label *ark:* after the URL's hostname, which sets the
> expectation that, when submitted to a web browser, the URL terminated by
> '?' returns a brief metadata record, and the URL terminated by '??' returns
> metadata that includes a commitment statement from the current service
> provider."
>
> Looking at the official documentation (
> https://confluence.ucop.edu/display/Curation/ARK), they provided an
> example
> of http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf5p30086k? which is supposed to return
> something called an Electronic Resource Citation, but it doesn't work.
> Probably because, and correct me if I'm wrong, using question marks in a
> URL in this way doesn't really work in HTTP.
>
> So, has anyone successfully implemented this? Is it even worth it? I'm not
> sure I can even implement this in my own architecture.
>
> Maybe it would be better to recommend a standard set of request parameters
> that actually work in REST?
>
> Ethan
>