The LOCKSS program, initiated by the Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR), comes to the aid of librarians who wish to build collections in the electronic environment to ensure perpetual access to today's intellectual, cultural, and historical output.
LOCKSS (for "Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe") is open source software that provides librarians with an easy and inexpensive way to collect, store, preserve, and provide access to their own, local copy of authorized content they purchase or select via the Web. Running on standard desktop hardware and requiring almost no technical administration, LOCKSS converts a personal computer into a digital preservation appliance, creating low-cost, persistent, accessible copies of e-journal content as it is published.
News of a variety of LOCKSS initiatives has been circulating through cyberspace and the print media. In an effort to keep our users informed, below is a listing of some of these projects. For more project information and news about LOCKSS, please refer to:
CLOCKSS Project (1/23/06)
A group of publishers, librarians, and learned societies have launched a community initiative employing the LOCKSS technology to support a large dark archive that serves as a failsafe repository for published scholarly content. Controlled LOCKSS (CLOCKSS), aims to provide assurance to the research community that a disaster, which would prevent the delivery of content, will not obstruct access to journal content. CLOCKSS content or the orphaned content would only become available after a trigger event, such as if the material were no longer available from the publisher. In these situations, a joint advisory board, representing societies, publishers and libraries, would begin the process of determining if the content is orphaned and whether it should be made publicly available. The board ensures that content is controlled but that no one person or sector has authority over orphaned digital materials in the system.
The initial two-year pilot includes research libraries, and commercial and society publishers. During this time, publishers and libraries will continue to work closely to collect and analyze data and develop a proposal for a full-scale archiving model. As part of a longer-term strategy to permanently preserve published work, CLOCKSS will report the findings to the wider community and begin the dialogue about a global infrastructure to ensure preservation of all past, present, and future digital scholarly content.
Alaska State Documents (1/23/06)
The Alaska State Library and the LOCKSS Alliance have joined together to provide a demonstration project for digital deposit of Alaska State Government Publications. Alaska State documents are now available for preservation on the LOCKSS system.
Fugitive U.S. Government Information (1/11/06)
A group of LOCKSS Alliance members has joined together on a project to preserve and provide access to fugitive government information via the LOCKSS network. By fugitive we mean government information that was not disseminated through the Federal Depository Library Program. Our first publications for this project are located on the Federation of American Scientists Project on the Government Secrecy Web site. In conjunction with the Director, Steven Aftergood, the LOCKSS team is preserving the valuable government information from this site via the LOCKSS network.
