Gallica wrapper

Gallica wrapper

Basic of Gallica API

ARK identifier

ARK (Archival Resource Key) is a unique identifier for any resource. It has for goal of creating a strong link between its id and the object. It works on the following principle:

• Responsibility of the organization for permanent access to its resources.
• Possibility to add a suffix to interrogate on the metadata of the resource.
• Opacity of its ID so that it never needs to be changed even if new properties of the resource arise.
• Complete control on all published IDs to ensure no duplicates.

An ARK has the following form: ark:/12148/bpt6k205233j, where

• ark: is the scheme
• 12148 is the Name Assigning Authority Number (NAAN), a unique number given to each institution by the California Digital Library (CDL). This particular number is the one of the BNF.
• bpt6k205233j the ARK name which is the identifier to the resource of the institution of the NAAN.

ARK is the ID scheme used at the BNF and is thus used in the wrapper to identify periodical and documents.