A charter describing the purposes and aims of the [PLN], an association dedicated to the preservation of digital materials

Last revised [Date]

[PLN] is an independent, international membership association administered by [host(s)]. [PLN]’s purpose is to support, promote, and extend distributed digital preservation practices. This approach relies upon a distributed preservation network infrastructure. [Brief history of PLN]

The [PLN] is responsible for preserving Member organizations’ content in a decentralized, distributed preservation network, as well as maintaining and extending its collaborative methodology and approach to distributed digital preservation.

The mission of the [PLN] is to foster better understanding of distributed digital preservation methods and to create enduring and stable, geographically dispersed "dark archives” of digital materials that can, if necessary, be drawn upon to restore collections at Member organizations. The [PLN] is guided in its work by the following operating principles:

• To encourage and support the long-term preservation of digital content;

• To promote a cooperative, robust, and decentralized approach to digital preservation;

• To encourage archives, libraries, research institutes, museums, and other such organizations to build their own preservation infrastructures and knowledge rather than outsourcing this core service to external vendors;

• To encourage the growth of distributed digital preservation networks for preserving copies of replicated content in secure, distributed locations over time;

• To maintain straightforward mechanisms for collaboration;

• To administer services that have wide applicability to a range of organizations and digital content;

• To utilize and create open standards and systems;

• To undertake research and development projects to advance digital preservation best practices.

Organizations such as universities and colleges; government entities; research libraries; archives; data centers; museums; library consortia; historical societies; collaborative digitization efforts; electronic text centers; science, social science, and humanities research computing centers; academic and other publishers; publishing associations; scholarly societies; and others that have significant or unique collections of digital content are encouraged to join the [PLN].

The [PLN] additionally works with and recognizes a range of affiliate organizations. [PLN] Strategic Affiliates are those organizations, consortia, and collaborative groups that we have advised and/or that have collaborated with the [PLN] on distributed digital preservation topics. Most [PLN] Strategic Affiliates are either Members or administrators of other distributed digital preservation networks, or engage in substantive digital preservation activities.

The [PLN] also welcomes independent participation and intellectual contributions from individual practitioners from those types of organizations.

Any organization or practitioner whose activities and objectives are aligned with the [PLN]’s mission and principles may join the [PLN]. Any organization joining at the Institutional or Consortial level may be accepted as a new Member upon a majority vote of the Voting Representatives of the Membership, electronically or in person (see Section 2.7 below). Any practitioner joining as an Individual Member may be accepted upon a majority vote of the Leadership Team. Upon acceptance, a new Member must sign and submit to the [host] office a [PLN] Membership Agreement affirming its acceptance of the conditions listed in this document.

The [PLN] has three membership categories: 1) Institutional Members, 2) Consortial Members, and 3) Individual Members.

Institutional Members are integral to the research, development, and deployment work of the [PLN] and agree to contribute staff and resources to the effort and to participate as identified under Member responsibilities. Institutional Members are also responsible for the ongoing activity of preserving digital content. Institutional Members can agree to host storage servers that meet current [PLN] Technical Specifications, or contribute other critical technology equivalent in value, and receive an annual storage fee exemption allowance as detailed in the [PLN] Membership Agreement. Those Institutional Members that contribute content to the [PLN] Preservation Network hold sole responsibility for determining ownership and their right to preserve content prior to submitting it to the Network (i.e., intellectual property and copyright issues). Institutional Members have certain rights of access related to the retrieval of their own content from the [PLN] Preservation Network (e.g., to replace files on their local systems). They receive periodic reports as to the development and operations of the Network and provide input and feedback regarding the [PLN]’s digital preservation services.

A Consortial Member is a group of institutions that share content to the [PLN] Preservation Network through a centralized staging web server. In order to qualify to become a Consortial Member, a consortium must meet the following criteria:

• Be a legal entity that acts on behalf of its membership;

• Guarantee sufficient rights, permissions, and license at the consortium and contributor level to enable contribution to and replication of content in a distributed digital preservation network, including assuming sole responsibility under local and international laws in order to conform with the [PLN] Membership Agreement, warranting the suitability of materials for inclusion in the [PLN] Preservation Network, and accepting joint and several liability for unlawful contributions from and acts of any and all consortium members;

• Run a centralized staging web server within the consortium through which all content that will be preserved in the [PLN] Preservation Network will be prepared, staged, and ingested; and

• Assign technical staff from the Consortial Member to prepare collections (including developing plugins) that will be staged for ingest into the [PLN] Preservation Network.

Consortial Members are also responsible for the ongoing activity of preserving digital content. Consortial Members can agree to host storage servers that meet current [PLN] Technical Specifications, or contribute other critical technology equivalent in value, and receive an annual storage fee exemption allowance as detailed in the [PLN] Membership Agreement. Those Consortial Members that contribute content to the [PLN] Preservation Network assume sole and singular legal and other responsibility for this included content and hold sole responsibility for determining ownership and their right to preserve all their contributors’ content prior to submitting it to the Network (i.e., intellectual property and copyright issues). Consortial Members have certain rights of access related to the retrieval of their own content from the [PLN] Preservation Network (e.g., to replace files on their local systems). They receive periodic reports as to the development and operations of the Network and provide input and feedback regarding the [PLN]’s digital preservation services.

Individual Members are representatives from an outgoing Institutional or Consortial Member that continue participation in the [PLN]. Institutional Membership is also open to field practitioners that have no previous or current Institutional or Consortial Membership but are seeking to learn more about distributed digital preservation. Individual Membership is without cost subject to certain conditions and limitations. Individual Members are permitted to attend all virtual monthly and committee meetings, but are not permitted to vote or make use of the [PLN] Preservation Network. Attendance at any in-person meetings may also be subject to a registration fee.

Each Member working with the [PLN] receives:

• Service opportunities within [PLN] Committees;

• Opportunities to collaborate with and/or learn from experienced digital preservation administrators, librarians, technologists, and others who work with the [PLN];

• The ability to influence the development of the [PLN] and the development of distributed digital preservation practices more generally; and

• Additional preservation services that can be purchased at a contract rate (e.g., consulting and training around preservation issues).

Each Institutional and Consortial Member working with the [PLN] receives:

• Voting rights in the [PLN];

• Distributed archiving of contributed digital collections across multiple, geographically distributed preservation sites;

• Retrieval of the Member’s content in case of a catastrophic loss;

• Assistance with the installation and maintenance of software in compliance with the [PLN] Technical Specifications, documentation of processes and technical standards, and technical support;

• Reports about the Member’s submitted content and about the overall Preservation Network;

• In the case of catastrophic circumstances, the ability to request technical and financial assistance with the restoration of a preservation site’s caches, software, and collections by the [PLN]. These requests will be reviewed and, at the discretion of the Membership, either approved or denied; and

• Access to the technical knowledge and expertise of [PLN] Members and technical support to establish and maintain preservation sites in compliance with the [PLN] Technical Specifications;

Consortial Members working with the [PLN] also receive:

• The ability to offset the cost of preservation by capitalizing on their existing, consortially hosted repository infrastructures.

All Institutional and Consortial Members working with the [PLN] agree to:

• Designate one individual to be a primary organizational contact and voting representative, hereafter Voting Representative. Members may have additional staff participate in meetings and communication channels, and serve on committees and working groups;

• Maintain membership in good standing by fully complying with this [PLN] Membership Agreement and the definition of herein and by acknowledging and agreeing to processes, procedures, and standards of governance found in the [PLN] Charter and with technical requirements identified in the Charter or other technical documents identified in [PLN] publications or notices;

• Where applicable, host and maintain storage servers that meet current [PLN] Technical Specifications and make these servers available for [PLN] developments as needed;

• Design and implement system features ensuring compliance with [PLN] security requirements and content validation, including but not limited to integrity checking as well as metadata analysis and tracking;

• Where applicable, install and maintain any other software that may be required for participation in the [PLN];

• Participate actively in the [PLN] Preservation Network by ingesting and monitoring content at the [PLN]’s request;

• Reproduce and distribute content submitted by other Members only to the extent necessary to conform to the requirements and conditions set forth within this [PLN] Membership Agreement;

• Support at your own expense any and all costs incurred by participating in the [PLN], including but not limited to paying membership fees, travel to required meetings, and other costs of participating in the [PLN];

• Implement and deploy appropriate standards, processes, procedures, and safeguards for resolving copyright and other legal requirements that might arise in contributing and/or hosting content in order to comply with local, state, federal, and international law, including the use of exceptions set forth within U.S. copyright law such as, but not limited, to good faith, reasonable applications of fair use in Section 107, relevant library reproduction and distribution in Section 108, and elsewhere in the statutes or amendments and/or permissions through “deeds of gift” or other instruments, documents, permissions, or clearance arrangements. Other potential governing laws for Members may require the application of principles such as, but not limited to, country of national origin governing the inclusion of materials and relevant exceptions and conditions governing the hosting of materials and resulting specifically from the geographical location of the preservation node. Members acknowledge and agree that they understand and comply with those laws as applicable in their jurisdictions and internationally. The [PLN] is hosted by [host], a nonprofit corporation registered in the United States with jurisdiction existing in the United States;

• Represent and warrant that to the best of their knowledge the Member is not contributing content to the Preservation Network that would infringe the rights of others and that the Member holds sufficient rights to License the [PLN] and Members sufficient rights to use the content consistent with the terms of the [PLN] Membership Agreement;

• [Hold the [PLN] and other Members harmless in the event of infringement, claims of infringement, loss of data, interoperability, and any other technical standards and governance claims by waiving any rights of recovery for any costs or damages associated with your relationships and Agreement with the [PLN];]

• [Indemnify the [PLN] to the extent permitted by law for any losses and costs incurred by the [PLN] and Members such as but not limited to legal fees, costs, and damage awards arising from infringement or other claims directly related to your activities in working with the [PLN] and Members;]

• Cure any material breaches of the contract within a 90-day period unless the [PLN] agrees in writing to an extension of the cure period; and

• Provide technical and administrative contact information as necessary to enable communication with other [PLN] participants as needed or upon request by the [PLN].

All Individual Members working with the [PLN] agree to:

• Participate actively in the [PLN] by attending virtual monthly and committee meetings; and

• Support at your own expense any and all costs incurred by participating in the [PLN], including but not limited to travel to in-person meetings, and other costs of participating in the [PLN].

The [PLN] collaborates with technical partners to develop and maintain software for the purposes of the [PLN] Preservation Network and freely shares all software components that it develops with the larger distributed digital preservation community.

Consortial and Institutional Members pay annual membership fees to the [PLN]. The purpose of the membership fees is to support [PLN] activities as outlined in Section 2.4.5 below.

The membership fees are published in the [PLN] Membership Agreement and are subject to review at the annual meeting of the [PLN] (see Section 3.4 below and the [PLN] Membership Agreement).

Each Member of the [PLN] should expect to cover its own costs associated with the following activities, as documented below: Systems Administration and Cache Monitoring, Communications, and Content Provision.

Membership in affiliated groups involved in maintaining the technical software may be encouraged. See the Technical Specifications for the most up-to-date information on the technical infrastructure of the [PLN] Preservation Network.

All Members who host and maintain storage servers for [PLN] are required to perform the systems administration and cache-monitoring activities needed to maintain successful cache operation. Once a cache is established and operational, systems administration and cache monitoring are routine tasks requiring minimal amounts of work time (Please see the [PLN] Quality Assurance Strategy for more details).

All Members are expected to participate in collaborative communication activities with the [PLN] and to bear associated local costs. Members are responsible for acquiring and installing any necessary hardware and software associated with these communications methods (see Section 3.3 below).

All Members making use of the [PLN] Preservation Network are required to bear any cost associated with creating or acquiring digital content and preparing it for submission to the Network. Specifically, all Members are responsible for readying their collections and associated metadata for ingest.

It is understood and agreed that all digital content contributed to the [PLN] Preservation Network by all Members for preservation purposes may remain in the Network indefinitely. The [PLN] Membership, through the coordination of the Leadership Team and a majority vote of the Voting Representatives, reserves the right to remove content from the [PLN] Preservation Network, in, but not limited to, such cases as: a) content is deemed unsuitable; b) content was submitted without proper copyright clearance; c) if the submitting Member fails to fulfill its responsibilities to the [PLN] as stated in this Charter and in the signed Membership Agreement; or d) [host]’s Board of Directors determines that continued hosting of specifically identified content creates a material, legal, or institutional concern for [host].

All Institutional and Consortial Members in the [PLN] are required to pay an annual membership fee to the [PLN] to support the following administrative functions:

• Central administration of the [PLN];

• Administering community meetings;

• Administering training events for new Members and for the extended community that is interested in distributed digital preservation;

• Administering conference calls and other communications between Members;

• Emergency replacement of storage servers or other equipment, as determined by majority vote of the Voting Representatives of the Membership;

• Planning for and undertaking expansion, new functionalities, etc. for the [PLN] Preservation Network as needed; and

• Other purposes as deemed appropriate by the [PLN] Leadership Team in consultation with all Members.

The [PLN] strives diligently to comply with copyright and other applicable laws. The [PLN] includes Members from diverse geographical locations and countries of origin in order to provide geographical distribution for long-term preservation, thereby implicating principles of national origin and a multiplicity of differing legal regimes and conditions that might govern contributing and/or hosting content in the [PLN] Preservation Network but concurrently serving the foundational requirement of safeguarding digital resources for future generations by geographical distribution. The [PLN] accordingly requires its Members to implement and deploy appropriate standards, processes, procedures, and safeguards for resolving copyright and other legal requirements that might arise in contributing and/or hosting content in order to comply with local, state, federal, and international law, including the use of exceptions set forth within U.S. copyright law such as, but not limited, to good faith, reasonable applications of fair use in Section 107, relevant library reproduction and distribution in Section 108, and elsewhere in the statutes or amendments and/or permissions through “deeds of gift” or other instruments, documents, permissions, or clearance arrangements. Other potential governing laws for Members may require the application of principles such as, but not limited to, country of national origin governing the inclusion of materials and relevant exceptions and conditions governing the hosting of materials and resulting specifically from the geographical location of the Member-hosted [PLN] storage server. Members acknowledge and agree that they understand and comply with those laws as applicable in their jurisdictions and internationally. The [PLN] is hosted by [host], a nonprofit corporation registered in the United States with jurisdiction existing in the United States.

Member organizations are required to sign and submit a [PLN] Membership Agreement to the [PLN].

Inquiries about joining the [PLN] should be addressed to the [PLN] Leadership Team (see Sections 3.1 and 3.2.1 below).

The [PLN] (the "[PLN]") is an independent, international membership association administered by the [host], a nonprofit corporation. Any organization or individual whose activities and objectives are consistent with the [PLN]'s mission and operating principles may join the [PLN].

The [PLN] Leadership Team (see 3.2.1) is the governing body of the [PLN] and directs its activities. The address for official correspondence is:

[Address for host institution]

The [PLN] governance structure consists of a Leadership Team, Documentation Committee, Outreach and Membership Services Committee, and Technical Committee.

Additions to the Leadership Team (see 3.2.2) for new Member organizations and/or to replace outgoing committee members are subject to nomination and a majority vote of the Voting Representatives of the Membership (see 3.4).

The standard term of service for all [PLN] committees is two years, except where otherwise noted in the Governance Procedures; terms are renewable.

Any representative of a Member organization may serve on a committee (i.e., not only the voting representative), including the Leadership Team. The Leadership Team is determined by nomination and simple majority vote of the Voting Representatives of the Membership.

The Leadership Team is the governing body of the [PLN]. It is responsible for overall management, coordination, communication, and reporting efforts. The Leadership Team consists of a Chair, Chair-Elect, Treasurer, and Secretary. Co-chairs of the [PLN] Committees meet with the Leadership Team in an advisory role. Decisions recommended by the Leadership Team are made by simple majority vote of the Voting Representatives of the Membership, either documented via email or at [PLN] meetings.

The Outreach & Membership Services Committee is responsible for planning, developing, and evaluating strategies for deepening engagement and providing support across the [PLN]’s membership, and educating prospective and continuing members on [PLN]’s distinctive approach to community-driven digital preservation.

The Technical Committee is responsible for developing and maintaining technical specifications and coming to agreements on hardware, software, and networking protocols, overall server architecture, network infrastructure, application development, and software maintenance. Technical Committee members liaise with the Technical Team, Documentation Committee, and external technical working groups as appropriate.

The Documentation Committee is responsible for developing and maintaining documentation to support the governance, outreach, and technical activities of the [PLN]. Documentation Committee members will liaise with [PLN] committees and working groups to ensure that governance and outreach activities are documented; members will also liaise with the Technical Committee, Technical Team, and external technical working groups as appropriate to ensure that technical documentation is kept up-to-date.

All Members are expected to participate in collaborative communication activities with the [PLN] and to bear associated local costs. With regard to communications within our communities of practice and the public, Members of the [PLN] are encouraged to disseminate information of their work via professional conferences and publications.

The [PLN] administers an annual business meeting each year. The venue and agenda are distributed by e-mail to the Member organizations at least one month in advance. This business meeting is used for discussion and to make decisions for the following year, including the election of leadership for all Committees, annual review of membership fees, annual review of the Charter document, annual review of the Technical Specifications, and other needed actions.

All Members, regardless of their classification, share some rights and responsibilities in common, including agreeing to membership terms of no less than a three-year duration with a one-year notice to cancel membership thereafter. This time frame provides some predictability for the [PLN] as it continues to grow and will help improve services to all Members by lessening administrative burdens and thus potentially lessening membership fees. Members may withdraw from the [PLN] at the beginning of each term (as determined by the date they joined the [PLN]), with one year’s notice to the [PLN]'s office with no further obligation on their part or the part of the [PLN].

The working assumption of the [PLN] is that Member organizations will fulfill their obligations to the [PLN]. These obligations include, but are not limited to:

• Payment of fees and provision of proper notice of cancellation;

• Compliance with technical and communication standards and governance and collaboration obligations identified in the Charter;

• Copying and distributing content via the [PLN] Preservation Network only in ways permitted by copyright and that comply with all local, state, federal, and international law; and

• Ensuring the security of the [PLN] Preservation Network and its materials.

• Infringement of these or other obligations may constitute a material breach. Members and the [PLN] generally enjoy a 90-day opportunity to cure a material breach by working with the [PLN] to reach and reduce to writing a satisfactory solution to the breach. However, in some instances, the [PLN] may need to terminate a Member’s access to the [PLN] Preservation Network and any interaction with it.

• Disruption of the [PLN] Preservation Network by the activities on or through access points within the direct control of the Member likely could lead to immediate termination at the sole discretion of the [PLN]. The [PLN] would then work with the Member to identify the causes of the breach and provide the Member with opportunity to cure it, subject to the nature and extent of the underlying intrusion or harm. Members work together reasonably with the [PLN] and provide any additional information necessary to investigate the breach.

The [PLN]’s approach to long-term digital preservation of content is a coordinated effort by a decentralized group of organizations to preserve digital objects.

[PLN] Preservation Network is a functioning network of servers that currently use the LOCKSS framework to act collectively for the preservation of digital content. This is achieved through replicating collections and storing them over a distributed geographical area. The [PLN] Preservation Network is a distributed, mutually administered archive of digital content that has internal mechanisms for data integrity checks and heavy security and fault-tolerance features. All [PLN] Preservation Network servers (operated by Members) act as peers for the purpose of long-term preservation. Each Member site’s cache communicates as needed on a per collection basis only with other caches in the [PLN] Preservation Network designated for replicating that collection.

All preservation sites serve as joint custodians of ingested and preserved content. However, the modularity of the [PLN] Preservation Network ensures that, should a Member withdraw from the network by choice or due to technical dysfunction, no loss of data occurs, as all ingested content is reliably preserved and validated at multiple preservation sites.

The [PLN] Preservation Network ingests digital objects of any MIME media type using a focused web crawl mechanism. Following ingest, the software uses the LOCKSS protocol to verify the integrity of ingested data.

In order for the [PLN] Preservation Network to ingest a Member’s materials, the Member must first:

• Complete an entry in the appropriate [PLN] ingest database for each collection to be included; and

• Create functional manifest pages and associated plugins for their collections as needed.

A [PLN] Preservation Network is not intended as a substitute for a robust local backup and recovery regimen. However, in the event of data loss at any Member site, that Member may recover its data in full from the [PLN] Preservation Network and archive(s) to which it has contributed content. Data available for recovery includes the metadata and the digital objects that the Member has submitted to a [PLN] Preservation Network and that the Members have successfully ingested. Recovery time is dependent on the size of the collection to be recovered and restored.

To ensure that all data submitted to the [PLN] network is successfully ingested, and thus is available for extraction and replication by a Member, the [PLN] makes reports available to Members, annually and upon request, through an auto-generated, web-based tool. These reports relay information concerning what content has been ingested and by which caches. It is each Member’s responsibility to track and audit the integrity of its own collections using these report tools (e.g., if the report shows that a submitted collection has not yet been ingested by the appropriate number of caches, the Member should bring this to the attention of the [PLN]’s Central Staff).

The [PLN] Preservation Network offers its Members technical assistance and guidance. The [PLN]’s Central Staff currently consists of core employees (see Section 4.2. below) who work with an extended group of technical staff members to deploy and maintain [PLN]-LOCKSS caches at each Institutional and Consortial Member site.

The [PLN]’s Central Staff coordinates advice and guidance to Members with regards to the following tasks:

• Setting up a functioning [PLN]-LOCKSS cache;

• Running security compromise tests; and

• Running collection recovery, disk recovery, and vault recovery tests.

The [PLN]-LOCKSS caches are “vault” servers maintained at Member institutions. Each vault server, which contains the preservation copies of digital collections, runs a robust firewall, with ports open for LOCKSS and SSH. Each vault server responds only to specified network addresses and ports. This configuration provides an extremely secure architecture, and is also relatively simple for Members to maintain and monitor. For more details, please see the [PLN] Technical Specifications.

The [PLN] works through a distributed-staffing model in which each Member contributes staff time and energy to the production of the Network. [host] employs core staff members and consultants who focus on the administration of the [PLN] Preservation Network. As the network grows, we will adjust staffing to fit the needs of our Members.

The [PLN] may publicize and promote its work through the following means:

• Maintaining a dedicated Web site and social media presence;

• Producing press releases, fact sheets, and brochures;

• Administering workshops;

• Sponsoring a table or advertisement at a conference;

• Providing consulting services on preservation topics;

• Giving conference presentations; and

• Publishing articles.