The repository shall have contracts or deposit agreements which specify and transfer all necessary preservation rights, and those rights transferred shall be documented.

This is necessary in order to have sufficient control of the information for preservation and limit the repository’s exposure to liability or legal and financial harm.

Contracts, deposit agreements; specification(s) of rights transferred for different types of digital content (if applicable); policy statements on requisite preservation rights.

Because the right to change or alter digital information is often restricted by law to the creator, it is important that digital repository contracts and agreements address the need to be able to work with and potentially modify digital objects to keep them accessible. Repository agreements with depositors must specify and/or transfer to the repository certain rights enabling appropriate and necessary preservation actions for the digital objects within the repository. Because legal negotiations can take time, potentially preventing or slowing the ingest of digital objects at risk, it is acceptable for a digital repository to take in or accept digital objects even with only minimal preservation rights using an open-ended agreement and then deal with expanding to detailed rights later.

The APTrust Sustaining Member Deposit Agreement (2015, current adopted version) demonstrates that the repository has the rights and authorizations needed to enable it to collect and preserve digital content over time, and make that information available to its Designated Community.

The APTrust Required Metadata for deposit into APTrust also includes the Access tag field. This field, which is “one of three enumerated access conditions. [“Consortia”, “Restricted”, “Institution”]. These access restrictions describe who can see the object metadata, including the object’s name and description, a list of its generic files and events. APTrust does not currently provide access to the objects themselves, except when the owning institution restores a bag it owns. In other words, no matter which access setting you choose, no other institution can access your intellectual object. The general public cannot see any information in the APTrust system.”

This page is linked on the Mandatory Responsibilities page.