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CUL Joins LOCKSS Alliance

In January 2005 CUL joined the LOCKSS Alliance. LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) began as a research project at Stanford in the late 1990s. The project team has now moved toward a sustainable implementation with the establishment late last year of the LOCKSS Alliance, a library membership organization for educational institutions that are interested in the potential of LOCKSS as one piece of the long-term management puzzle for digital materials.

Cornell has been a participant in LOCKSS since early in the research phase and is a charter member of the Alliance with a one-year trial membership to consider the potential benefits for managing some of our digital library materials over time. The five units that contributed to the trial membership fee for CUL are CUL Administration, Preservation, DLIT, CD Exec, and the Research/Digital Preservation Officer. The principal CUL contacts for LOCKSS Alliance are Nancy McGovern for coordination, Ross Atkinson for selection-related issues, and Bill Kehoe for technical support. Ross Atkinson and Fred Muratori have done selection for LOCKSS so far. Toward the end of this year we will review our participation and the proposed directions of the LOCKSS Alliance to evaluate our membership renewal and recommend the next steps.

Currently, more than eighty libraries and fifty publishers around the world are using the LOCKSS software. Briefly, LOCKSS is open source software that provides librarians with a low-maintenance mechanism for collecting, storing, and providing long-term access to the library’s own local copy of authorized purchased content. The LOCKSS Alliance is a library membership organization serving educational institutions that are using the software to build library collections and are interested in participating in development and expansion of applications and services. The Alliance community will help determine long-term priorities and strategies for software and program evolution.

The LOCKSS Alliance is interested in developing and expanding applications and services. We think CUL can contribute by supporting this community-based initiative to address key digital preservation issues (adequate redundancy, ensuring the sustainability of resources maintained by publishers, and archival storage) by devoting time and experience to the Alliance and by identifying resources to include in LOCKSS. We benefit by learning about digital preservation developments and being able to influence the direction of the Alliance through participation.

If you are interested in more information about the LOCKSS software or the Alliance, the LOCKSS Web site is an excellent source of information. It contains documentation for libraries, for programmers, and for publishers. In addition, Vicky Reich, a co-developer of LOCKSS, will be at CUL July 20-22 as a keynote speaker at the Digital Preservation Management Workshop. Look for updates on our participation on the CUL Digital Preservation Officer (DPO) Web site after the first LOCKSS Alliance conference phone call on June 20.

Next: Education and Training in Preservation and Conservation