Federated and consortium-based repository models are increasingly common across the digital preservation landscape. Communities pool resources to operate shared curation platforms, preservation pipelines, storage infrastructures, and access systems. These arrangements offer clear benefits: reduced duplication, lower costs, shared expertise, and greater sustainability. At the same time, they raise important questions for trust certification. When members of a federated environment apply individually for CoreTrustSeal certification while relying on shared or outsourced functions, how should responsibility, accountability, and evidence of trustworthiness be transparently displayed and assessed?
The CoreTrustSeal Board has created a discussion paper that articulates a CoreTrustSeal perspective on these questions, grounded in the principles of community stewardship, active preservation, and long-term responsibility. It builds directly on the CoreTrustSeal Extended Guidance on third-party services and outsourced functions, clarifying how that guidance applies to federated preservation communities. The central argument is straightforward: shared systems are acceptable and often desirable, but responsibility for preservation cannot be transferred, diluted, or obscured. Certified repositories must demonstrate active, organizational responsibility for curation and preservation, even when those activities are operationally distributed.
Comments are welcome on this shared Google document. They will feed the discussion of a session on the subject during the next iPRES conference.