The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research: Summary of the CRL Test Audit

In 2005 the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) was awarded funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop processes and procedures for auditing and certifying digital archives. The CRL project built upon the work of the Digital Repository Certification Task Force formed by the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). CRL engaged Robin Dale, then at RLG and now at the University of California at Santa Cruz, as project director, to lead the effort to test, refine and augment the RLG metrics by conducting trial audits of three digital archives. Technical analysis for the audits was provided by Sayeed Choudhury and Tim DeLauro at Johns Hopkins University. Repositories audited included the emerging Portico archive of e-journals maintained by Ithaka Harbors Inc.; E-Depot, the archive of Elsevier journals maintained by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek; and the repository of social science data sets maintained by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Re- search (ICPSR). A summary of the findings of the Portico and LOCKSS audits appeared in the January 2008 issue of The Charleston Advisor. The full report of the ICPSR test audit is now available on the CRL Web site at and and is summarized here.