RLG has announced that it has completed a draft report for the certification of digital repositories. The draft, titled "An Audit Checklist for the Certification of Trusted Digital Repositories," is available at RLG's Web site. The checklist is the product of a joint project between RLG and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The goal of the RLG-NARA Digital Repository Certification project has been to identify the criteria repositories must meet for reliably storing, migrating, and providing access to digital collections. The "Audit Checklist" identifies procedures for certifying digital repositories. Using the RLG-NARA checklist, another project will actually audit the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands), which maintains the digital archive for Elsevier Science Direct Journals, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), and Portico, an archive for electronic journals incubated within Ithaka Harbors, Inc. Stanford's LOCKSS system will also participate in this effort. Comments on the draft are due before mid-January 2006.

(www.rlg.org)