By Ann | September 15, 2005
ICPSR will be taking part in the RLG-NARA Digital Repository Certification project to identify the criteria repositories must meet for reliably storing, migrating, and providing access to digital collections.ICPSR has been selected to serve as a “test subject” in the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) project to develop an audit checklist for certification of trusted digital repositories. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, this project builds on the work of a Task Force consisting of members from the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and the U.S. National Archives and Research Administration (NARA). The Task Force is charged with developing criteria to identify digital repositories capable of reliably storing, migrating, and providing longterm access to digital collections.
RLG has released a draft of the “Audit Checklist for the Certification of Trusted Digital Repositories,” which is available at http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20769. This represents the fifth generation of the RLG-NARA group’s work and provides best, current practice and thought about the organizational and technical infrastructure required for a digital repository to be considered trustworthy and capable of certification.
Leveraging the RLG-NARA audit tool, the CRL project will test audit criteria and metrics with three test subjects, including:
- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
- Koninklijke Bibliotheek National Library of the Netherlands, which maintains the digital archive for Elsevier Science Direct Journals
- Portico, an archive for electronic journals incubated within Ithaka Harbors, Inc.
Stanford’s LOCKSS system will also participate in this effort, which runs through October 2006.
Comments on the draft are welcomed and are due before mid-January 2006 to Robin Dale, the RLG-NARA Task Force Co-chair and project manager: Robin.Dale@rlg.org (+1-650-691-2238).
Contributed by Ann Green