Becoming A Certified Trustworthy Digital Repository: The Portico Experience

The scholarly community’s dependence on electronic resources is rapidly increasing and those electronic resources are increasingly preserved in digital repositories or other preservation services. Whether locally hosted at libraries, collaboratively hosted between institutions, or externally hosted by a third party, one method for these digital repositories to take to assure themselves and their communities of their soundness is to be audited and certified by impartial organizations. Such independent organizations with staff experienced in executing audits and certifications can represent the interests of the academic community. Such staff will have the time and skills required to perform a thorough review of the methodologies and policies of each digital repository. Over the course of 2009, the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) audited Portico, a third party preservation service. At the conclusion of the audit, CRL certified Portico as a trustworthy digital repository. The audit was a lengthy, productive experience for Portico. We share the experience here both to impart the depth of the audit and to inform other organizations of what steps might be involved should they choose to be audited and certified.