Trust in Repositories: Building and Measuring Trustworthiness Using TRAC

Since the Preserving Digital Information report was released in 1996, the digital community’s expectation has been growing for a repository – both repository as organization and as software – that manages digital content across time to explicitly and transparently demonstrate adherence to an emerging set of digital preservation standards and practice as a measure of trustworthiness. Addressing that expectation presents opportunities and challenges to repositories. The formalization of the Trustworthy Repository Audit and Certification (TRAC) requirements as an ISO standard in 2012 provides a framework for research and practice regarding trust in repositories. This paper provides a brief overview of the emergence of trust as a core digital preservation concept; three examples of relevant initiatives – one that investigates trust in repositories as perceived by users, a second that provide a means for repositories to demonstrate and continually measure progress towards addressing TRAC requirements, and a third that enables repositories to apply TRAC-based rules to monitor and manage digital content within a shared archival storage environment; and a conclusion with a summary of the current status and brief recommendations for next steps within the community.