Description of "Assign ARK identifiers to a valid SKOS/RDF-XML file" service

Files containing "skos:Concept" or "Concept" type "rdf:Description" are processed by this service.

This service allows the replacement of the identifiers (URI) of a SKOS/RDF-XML file by ARK identifiers built according to the recommendations of the California Digital Library (CDL).

An ARK identifier has the following syntax:

• The NMA (Name Adressing Authority), its role is to make the URL clickable in a web browser.
• The actual ARK identifier which consists of:
  • the "ark:/" label,
  • a NAAN (Name Assigning Authority Number) identifying the naming organization which is attributed on demand by the CDL.

The transformation is performed in two stages:

1- Replacing the resource URI (at the level of the concept scheme) by the following generic URI: http://mon_site.fr/ark:/NAAN/ABC. The old URI is kept in a "dc:identifier" field.

At the concept level, an 8-character alphanumeric sequence followed by a dash and then a "check sum" completes this prefix and constitutes a unique ARK identifier for each concept of the resource.

2- The URI are recalculated for:

• each of the "skos:broader", "skos:narrower", "skos:related" relations,
• the possible "skosxl:prefLabel", "skosxl:altLabel", "skosxl:hiddenLabel" properties,
• the members of possible collections,
• the possible "skosxl:Label" elements.

To have ARK identifiers that comply with CDL recommendations (see details here), the generic URI must be replaced as follows:

• Replace the sequence "http://mon_site.fr" (Adressing Authority) by the right URL.
• Keep the "/ark:/" label.
• Replace "NAAN" (Name Assigning Authority Number) by organization NAAN.
• Replace "ABC" by an alphanumeric short code corresponding to the resource itself.
• This is a real example: http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/1WB.

Note that in the absence of NAAN, the URI can not be considered an ARK identifier but can nevertheless be used without the ark:/NAAN/ part, the last part being a unique identifier.