The Primary Trustworthy Digital Repository Authorisation Body (ISO-PTAB) is the anchor for the provision of ISO audit and certification of digital repositories and plays a major role in training and accrediting auditors. This web site is a central source of information about ISO-PTAB, auditors and audits.
Background
In 1996 the Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information (reference [B1]) declared, ‘a critical component of digital archiving infrastructure is the existence of a sufficient number of trusted organizations capable of storing, migrating, and providing access to digital collections’. The task force saw that ‘trusted’ or trustworthy organizations could not simply identify themselves. To the contrary, the task force declared, ‘a process of certification for digital archives is needed to create an overall climate of trust about the prospects of preserving digital information’.
Work in articulating responsible digital archiving infrastructure was furthered by the development of the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (reference [1]). Designed to create a consensus on ‘what is required for an archive to provide permanent or indefinite long-term preservation of digital information’, the OAIS addressed fundamental questions regarding the long-term preservation of digital materials that cut across domain-specific implementations. The reference model (ISO 14721) provides a common conceptual framework describing the environment, functional components, and information objects within a system responsible for the long-term preservation of digital materials. Long before it became an approved standard in 2002, many in the cultural heritage community had adopted OAIS as a model to better understand what would be needed from digital preservation systems.