John Kunze

John Kunze is a pioneer in the theory and practice of digital libraries. With a background in computer science and mathematics, he wrote BSD Unix software tools that come pre-installed with Mac and Linux systems. He created the ARK identifier scheme, the N2T.net scheme-agnostic resolver (which redirects over 600 kinds of CURIEs, or “compact identifiers”), and contributed heavily to the first standards for URLs (RFC1736, RFC1625, RFC2056), for library search and retrieval (Z39.50), for archival transfer (BagIt - RFC8493), for web archiving (WARC), and for metadata (RFC2413, RFC2731, ANSI/NISO Z39.85). His specs and tools for repository microservices – Pairtree, Namaste, ReDD, oxum, ERC/ANVL, TEMPER, THUMP – may be found in such places as the HathiTrust and OCFL. Follow-on work in metadata includes creation of the Dublin Kernel and YAMZ (Yet Another Metadata Zoo). His current work focus is the ARK Alliance (arks.org), YAMZ.net, and the DWeb.