How to Become a Deposit Agent

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 Documentation Center.
2. Request deposit agent setup. Send a request to the Digital Projects Team in OIS, indicating your intent to become a deposit agent. An OIS staff member will get back to you about next steps, which will include an orientation meeting and registration activities. These next steps are described below.
   
   *** Wait for clearance from your OIS contact before taking these next steps! ***
   
   
3. Subscribe to the DRS Depositors' iSite and DRS mailing list. This will be done by your OIS contact.
4. Request a DRS drop box account by submitting a Drop Box request form. Remember to use a secure FTP client when accessing this drop box. See the DRS Documentation Center for a list of SFTP clients that work with the DRS Loader.
5. Register to access the DRS Maintenance system (called "Web Admin") by submitting a DRS/PDS Operator Registration form. Any project staff who may perform QA review of deposited objects should have DRS Web Admin access.
6. [Optional] Register to access the PDS Maintenance system by submitting a DRS/PDS Operator Registration form. This step is only needed if you will be depositing page-turned materials destined for the Page Delivery Service.
7. Collect project-related information from the owner of the objects you will be depositing. You will supply this information in the batch transaction file. If you need to learn more about the codes and concepts listed below, consult the DRS FAQ.
   • DRS owner code to be used for this project. See DRS Registered Owners for a list of existing owner codes.
   • 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. See the DRS Load Manual (section 4) for more information.
   • 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 the DRS Load Manual (section 4) for more information.
8. Perform a test batch deposit and resolve any problems that arise.
   • 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 Digital Projects Team.
   • Submit a batch deposit to the DRS test system, using the test FTP account provided by OIS. When DRS responds that a deposit is successful (by sending a load report), your next step is a production deposit.
9. Perform a production batch deposit.