The Role of Evidence in Establishing Trust in Repositories



The Role of Evidence in Establishing Trust in Repositories

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july06/ross/07ross.html


(CRL)14 Certification of Digital Archives15 project with support from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation. This project is currently conducting pilot audits of digital archives
including the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB),
16 the Inter-University Consortium for Political
and Social Research (ICPSR),
17 and Portico.18 In addition, the CRL team will audit the
distributed archiving system LOCKSS
19 ("Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe"). The overall aim
of the CRL work is to evaluate in as formal a way as possible the audit and certification
checklist proposed by the RLG-NARA Certification Task Force, and to offer some insight
into the applicability of their proposed metrics. The DCC collaborated with the CRL on the
KB audit in April 2006 as a way to ensure comparability of practice during the pilot between
DCC and CRL approaches.

A comparable German initiative, the Network of Expertise in Long-term Storage of Digital
Resources (
nestor), aims to raise awareness for digital preservation issues, promote best
practices, and foster the development of an associated community of expertise.
20 A nestor
working group is exploring the development of a procedure for certification as well as a
criteria catalogue for characterising "trustworthy archives".
21 Nestor has conceived its own
checklist for repository audit; this work covers the technical, organisational, and financial
characteristics of a digital repository. Stefan Strathmann, Gottingen State and University
Library (Germany) provided us with access to an early draft of the
nestor checklist [6]. One
strength of the
nestor work is that the criteria are well founded on broad thinking in digital
preservation, and the criteria catalogue itself has been built on the rich literature base related
to digital preservation. Recent discussions with Suzanne Dobratz indicate that
nestor is

22
working to develop mechanisms to assess a repository's fulfilment of the criteria.

Another German example, the Deutsche Initiative fur Netzwerkinformation (DINI)23 has
established a certification approach covering institutional document and publication
repositories focused on examining quality of service, visibility, interoperability, and reliance
on standards [
3, 4]. The DINI certification process starts with a repository completing an
audit template. Following submission of the completed questionnaire an information
specialist and a technical expert evaluate the responses and assess whether certification
should be granted; this process often involves communication with the repository seeking
certification to ask it for additional information. The
DINI certificate, launched in 2003 by
the Electronic Publishing working group established a minimum set of requirements for
repositories and the institutions that administered them, covering such issues as server
policies, legal matters, and long-term availability and sustainability. Although, so far,
restricted to a single class repository,
DINI in 2006 runs the only functional digital repository
certification scheme.
24

3. Planning Pilot Audits

To further clarify how repository audit and certification should be conducted, the DCC is
engaged in a series of pilot audits that will complement ongoing work in Germany and the
USA. DCC audits will take place during July and August of 2006 at three UK organizations,
and the outcome of these audits will be published later in 2006. In preparation for these
audits we recognise the need to establish an understanding of what represents an evidence
base for repository audit, define a list of classes of individuals who should participate in the
process of gathering and presenting the evidence, assist other initiatives in defining the
metrics and strategies that should be used to evaluate documentary, system and testimonial
evidence, and contribute to the refining of the thinking on audit criteria and processes.

The evaluation process begins prior to the site visit, with initial research into the institutional
infrastructure of the repository, the nature of its collections, and the demographics of its
depositors and consumers. As a second stage in audit planning, a pre-visit questionnaire will

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