How to Become a Deposit Agent

Owned by Julie Wetherill
Last updated: Dec 07, 2017 by Vitaly Zakuta

A deposit agent is an individual or organization authorized to deposit batches of digital objects into the DRS. An agent may be a reformatting/digitization vendor or, an agent may be an individual within the organization that owns the digital objects.

If you are interested in becoming a deposit agent, please follow these steps.

  1. Review DRS documentation about batch deposit and metadata requirements. Consult the DRS User Documentation Center.
  2. Request deposit agent setup. Send a request to the LTS Support Team, indicating your intent to become a deposit agent. An LTS staff member will get back to you about next steps, which will include an orientation meeting, scheduling training on DRS tools and registration activities. These next steps are described below.

    *** Wait for clearance from your LTS contact before taking these next steps! ***

  3. Attend an orientation meeting with an LTS Systems Librarian
  4. Attend training on DRS tools: DRS Training
  5. Register to access the DRS: DRS Requests Logins, Billing and Owner Codes, Dropbox
  6. An LTS Digital Projects Librarian will provide the DRS drop box credentials for making a test batch deposit
  7. Collect project-related information from the owner of the objects you will be depositing. You will supply this information in the batch deposit.
    • DRS owner code to be used for this project.
    • DRS billing code to be used for this project. Billing codes look like this: FHCL.FAL.ABCD_0001.
    • Decision about owner-supplied name. This is a unique identifier assigned to each deposited object, usually a local accession number or other unique local identifier.
    • Decision about requesting URNs (persistent identifiers) during batch deposit. URNs are required for deliverable objects and optional for other objects. If URNs will be requested, from the object owner you will need a name authority path and resource name pattern. See Planning for NRS Naming for more information.
  8. Perform a test batch deposit and resolve any problems that arise. Contact a Digital Project Librarian so they can review your deposit.
    • Define your deposit workflow and determine your target deposit size (average number of objects to be deposited in each batch). For assistance with workflow decisions, contact the LTS Support Team.
    • Submit a batch deposit to the DRS test system, using the test SFTP account provided by LTS. When DRS responds that a deposit is successful (by sending a load report), your next step is to contact a Digital Project Librarian for batch review.
    • Once batch review is complete and any problems that arise are resolved a Digital Project Librarian will provide DRS production dropbox credentials. The next step is to perform a production batch deposit.
  9. Perform a production batch deposit.