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GPO LOCKSS Pilot ProjectBackground | What is LOCKSS? | Pilot Project Description | Pilot Partners Final ReportBackground
While GPO's mission includes permanent public access, many Federal agency publishers' missions do not. In order to make room for new issues and volumes, agency publishers often overwrite or remove old e-journal content. This practice frequently leads to the disappearance of Government e-journals from the Web. GPO and its library partners have identified a need for GPO to take physical custody of the "bits and bytes" that make up Government e-journals before they are removed by agency publishers. [ Top ] What is LOCKSS?LOCKSS (for "Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe") is open source software that provides institutions with a way to collect, store, and preserve access to their own, local copy of content. LOCKSS was developed by Stanford University, and it is currently maintained by the Stanford University LOCKSS Program Management Office with support from the LOCKSS Alliance. LOCKSS runs on standard desktop hardware and requires minimal technical administration. Once installed, the LOCKSS software converts a personal computer into a digital preservation box that creates low-cost, persistent, accessible copies of e-journal content as it is published. The accuracy and completeness of content stored in a LOCKSS box is assured through a robust and secure, peer-to-peer polling and reputation system. A LOCKSS box performs the following four functions:
CollectingBefore LOCKSS boxes can preserve a journal, two things have to happen:
Preserving and AuditingThe LOCKSS boxes at libraries around the world use the Internet to audit, continually but very slowly, the content they are preserving. At intervals boxes take part in polls, voting on the digest of some part of the content they have in common. If the content in one box is damaged or incomplete that box will lose the poll, and it can repair the content from other boxes. This cooperation between the boxes avoids the need to back them up individually. It also provides unambiguous reassurance that the system is performing its function and that the correct content will be available to readers when they try to access it. The more organizations that preserve given content, the stronger the guarantee they each get of continued access. Providing AccessLOCKSS boxes provide transparent access to the content they preserve. Institutions often run Web proxies, to allow off-campus users to access their journal subscriptions, and Web caches, to reduce the bandwidth cost of providing Web access to their community. Their LOCKSS box integrates with these systems, intercepting requests from the community's browsers to the journals being preserved. When a request for a page from a preserved journal arrives, it is first forwarded to the publisher. If the publisher returns content, that is what the browser gets. Otherwise the browser gets the preserved copy. AdministeringStaff administer their LOCKSS box via a Web user interface. A demonstration version of the interface is available. It allows for targeting the appliance to preserve new journals, monitoring the preservation of existing journals, controlling access to the box and other functions. Additional information about LOCKSS is available from the Stanford University LOCKSS Web site. [ Top ] Pilot Project DescriptionGPO has received numerous requests from research institutions, universities, depository libraries, and other Federal Government agencies to investigate using LOCKSS as a means to manage, disseminate, and preserve access to Web-based Federal Government e-journals that are within the scope of the FDLP and the IES. As a result, GPO will conduct a 12 month pilot to make Federal Government e-journals available to select pilot libraries that are operating LOCKSS boxes. The following elements will be used as "measures of success" for the pilot:
[ Top ] Pilot Partners (Additional pilot partners TBA)
[ Top ] Preliminary Pilot Timeline
[ Top ] LOCKSS Pilot e-Journals
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The mission of the Government Printing Office (GPO) is to provide permanent public access to official Federal Government publications in print and electronic formats through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). In addition, the International Exchange Service (IES) operates according to 44USC1719 which states, "there shall be supplied to the Superintendent of Documents. Government publications.for distribution to those foreign governments which agree, as indicated by the Library of Congress, to send to the United States similar publications of their governments for delivery to the Library of Congress." Various distribution systems (e.g. tangible depository distribution, GPO Access , etc.) exist to facilitate dissemination via the FDLP and IES. A federated dissemination system exists for the management and distribution of Government journals in print format, but a similar federated system does not exist for journals in electronic format (e-journals). In the print environment, copies of a Government journal are distributed to Federal depository libraries around the country through the FDLP and to libraries around the world through the IES. GPO currently distributes tangible journals through a system of trusted repositories that manage, maintain, and provide permanent public access to the journals. Under this system, the number of copies of the publication that are disseminated around the country and around the world strengthens permanent public access.