ARKs in Wikidata

[Bertrand Caron]

Dear All,

In the past month, there was a discussion in Wikidata about how to specify ARK identifiers in Wikidata items. Until now, each organization had its own property (for example, the BnF authorities catalog had a "BnF ID" property: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P268). The recorded part of the ARK in the Wikidata item was a part of the ARK name, and the property specified a "URL formatter" - in our P268 property, its value is "https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb$1". The item for René Magritte (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7836) is considered as having a "BnF ID" of value "123735831" while if you access the catalog record, you'll see it is assigned the ARK https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb123735831.

But a new property was proposed and approved: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Property_proposal/Archival_Resource_Key

It plans to record the whole ARK (with its NAAN) in a property, and resolve it through the n2t.net resolver. That seems much more consistent with the ARK logic, and will strengthen the need for a valid resolver URL in the NAAN registry if organizations want their resources to be referenced correctly from Wikidata. If this practice is adopted, it will have a great positive impact on how ARKs are considered and resolved in Wikidata.

All the best,

Bertrand