LOCKSS Launches Community Initiative to Preserve Scholarly Content

["Foley Virginia" <VFoley@bos.blackwellpublishing.com>]

LOCKSS Launches Community Initiative to Preserve Scholarly Content

Boston Mass, January 23, 2006 - A group of publishers, librarians, and
learned societies have launched an initiative employing the LOCKSS (Lots
of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) technology to support a "large dark archive"
that serves as a failsafe repository for published scholarly content.

The initiative, 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 the material was no 
longer available from the publisher. In these situations, a joint 
advisory board, representing societies, publishers and libraries, 
will begin the process to determine 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.

"Our community needs to ensure that when content becomes orphaned 
there is a process through which it becomes publicly accessible," 
said Vicky Reich, Director LOCKSS Program, Stanford University 
Libraries. "The CLOCKSS project offers an alternative solution to 
archiving and its strength lies in the fact that it has been 
founded by publishers and librarians- and will remain 
collectively managed."

CLOCKSS provides additional functionality to the LOCKSS system, 
which is widely known in the scholarly communications world as a 
technology for ensuring the integrity of digital content, and is 
used as part of preservation strategies for electronic journals 
to which libraries subscribe. CLOCKSS also differs from LOCKSS in 
that participating libraries will archive both subscribed and 
non-subscribed journals, with the ultimate goal of archiving all 
of the journals of participating publishers.

"As more scholars rely upon access to electronic journals, it has 
become critical to explore ways to ensure long-term availability 
of journal content," says Karen Wittenborg, University Librarian, 
University of Virginia. "This collaborative initiative addresses 
the uncertainty that librarians have confronted in the digital 
environment and shows promise of offering a real solution for 
long-term preservation."

The initial two-year pilot will include at least five research 
libraries, and several 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 scholarly content.

Participating Members

* Publishers - American Medical Association, American 
Physiological Society, Blackwell Publishing, Nature Publishing 
Group, Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications, Springer, 
Taylor and Francis, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. In addition, Elsevier 
is participating in all discussions and is sharing in financial 
support.

* Libraries - University of Edinburgh, Indiana University, New 
York Public Library, Rice University, Stanford University, 
University of Virginia.

For more information, visit http://www.lockss.org/clockss.

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