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Accreditation
Local Records Centre Accreditation, in which LRCs are able to firmly establish their work as conforming to the highest possible standards, is a concept long sought after; the Association seeks to develop such Accreditation and we currently seek the active involvement of any LRC wishing to bring this to fruition.
Background
Accreditation is an essential part of the task of deploying quality standards and establishing professional status for those who collect and those who manage biodiversity and earth science data. There has been much discussion on the need for and nature of accreditation but little has been formally adopted.
The Association intends to address this shortcoming and the development of a set of accreditation standards is high on the list of priorities.
The subject was examined in some depth several years ago. Involving several Local Records Centres, the NFBR and NBN and extensively researched by Charles Copp, a rather detailed scheme was devised. Details of this original set of proposals are in the form of an overview  and a "Workbook" scheme by Charles Copp.
This original proposal was for a simple ‘kite mark’ scheme which recognised three levels of accreditation. The first was Provisional Registration, a ‘working towards’ level appropriate to newly registering and developing LRCs. The second was Full Accreditation for LRCs meeting the benchmarks for chosen standards and the third, Full NBN Node for those accredited LRCs able to integrate fully with the NBN Gateway.
Update: LRC Accreditation Project
Details of the UK-wide LRC Accreditation project, supported by Natural England (via Defra) and partnered by ALERC were presented by Bill Butcher (WGB Environment) at ALERC's 2010 Conference.
The following files form part of the consultation process. Local Records Centres will be contacted separately by Bill, directing them to download these documents:  and
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