[Pasig-discuss] Stanford University LOCKSS Program to Mainstream Distributed Digital Preservation through New Project

[Arthur Pasquinelli]

September 7, 2017


/A grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will enable systems to be 
outfitted with award-winning LOCKSS digital preservation capabilities./

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Stanford, CA*--For eighteen years, the Stanford University LOCKSS (Lots 
of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) Program has supported the digital 
preservation needs of a diverse and growing community of institutions 
worldwide. With the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 
a major re-architecture effort is currently underway that will enable 
the unique functionalities of the LOCKSS software to be embedded in 
other systems for digital content management and preservation, further 
broadening access to best-in-class digital preservation capabilities.

The core of the LOCKSS software is a peer-to-peer data integrity 
validation and repair mechanism, a feature built upon peer-reviewed 
research to mitigate the real threats that centralization poses to the 
long-term persistence of digital information. This and other LOCKSS 
software elements, including tooling for automated metadata extraction 
and enhancements for discovery of scholarly communications within web 
archives, will be made available to the community as documented web 
services. Integration of these technologies will enhance other digital 
library, repository, content management and acquisition systems.

"More content is destroyed by people's actions than any other means; the 
LOCKSS technology secures content against this very real threat. 
Disaggregating LOCKSS components into web services for others to use 
holds the potential to significantly upgrade preservation treatment 
levels for a greater amount and a wider variety of content,” notes 
recently-retired LOCKSS Program Chief Scientist Dr. David S.H. 
Rosenthal, emphasizing the significance of the project.

Nicholas Taylor, LOCKSS Program Manager, says that the upgraded LOCKSS 
software will advance the preservation of more, and more kinds, of 
digital content. “LOCKSS technologies have only ever been applied in 
LOCKSS networks; the software re-architecture opens up many new 
possibilities,” says Taylor. “We’re working to make LOCKSS even more 
accessible and useful as a general-purpose digital preservation 
technology solution.”

More information about the LOCKSS software components and the 
re-architecture project will become available over the next year through 
the LOCKSS Program website (https://www.lockss.org/).

###

*About LOCKSS | www.lockss.org*

The LOCKSS Program, based at Stanford Libraries, provides libraries, 
knowledge institutions, and publishers with award-winning, low-cost, 
mature, open-source tools to preserve and provide access to persistent 
and authoritative digital content. LOCKSS received the first ever TRAC 
(Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification) perfect score from 
the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) for the Technologies, Technical 
Infrastructure, Security category. It is used by hundreds of 
institutions, supports the CLOCKSS Archive, and is incorporated into 
multiple community LOCKSS networks globally.

Program Contact:

Art Pasquinelli, LOCKSS Partnerships Manager, 
artpasquinelli at stanford.edu <mailto:artpasquinelli at stanford.edu%7C>* | 
*phone: 1-650-430-2441

  URL: https://library.stanford.edu/node/130509



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/pasig-discuss/attachments/20170908/0fcb72ad/attachment-0001.html>