Brokerage services can assist repositories in coming to an agreement about handing on their data holdings in case a repository can no longer preserve its holdings. The aim would be to allow those holding data to register any which they believe they may not be able to afford to maintain. Other repositories have the opportunity to offer to host that data. For example they may have spare storage capacity and similar designated communities.

This service could allow organisations to share information about the availability of hardware and software. This would be useful in the case of a repository which has physical media such as tapes or removable disks which it can no longer read, or datasets for which they no longer have the software to process it.

APARSEN will report on brokerage options and estimates of usage. This report will describe the various types of brokerage systems in use (data holding, hardware and software) and what is required from such a service together with estimates of the demands on such a service. We will also produce a Brokerage Server Report on prototype systems to facilitate this type of brokerage.