Sun Microsystems and Stanford University have been independently awarded two new, two-year grants totaling almost $3 million to the LOCKSS ("Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe") Program from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The LOCKSS program is a joint undertaking of Sun Microsystems Laboratories and Stanford University Libraries to develop a secure, reliable system which safeguards and preserves access to digital publications.

The LOCKSS system is designed to make it feasible and affordable, even for smaller libraries, to preserve access to the e-journals to which they subscribe and safeguard their community's access to them. Individual libraries can also monitor the level of redundancy within the system.

A total of 49 libraries, including the Library of Congress, are currently running Linux systems with the LOCKSS software as part of a long-term test.

Individual Grants Support Development and Resources

As part of its program in support of electronic journal archiving, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant is intended to support the production, development and implementation of distributed electronic journal archives through LOCKSS. Partner institutions for this aspect of the program include Emory University, Indiana University and New York Public Library.

The National Science Foundation and Sun Microsystems Laboratories plan to continue funding core technology development, focusing on the peer-to-peer (P2P), fault-tolerant aspects of the system. Both organizations have funded previous phases of the LOCKSS Program. The two new grants cover Stanford's participation in the program, coordinating with Sun's concurrent research.

"By helping Stanford to build the Open-Source LOCKSS software we hope to allow organizations anywhere to preserve pertinent journal literature to which they have subscribed," said Dr. James Mitchell, vice president and director of Sun Labs. "Researchers and scholars can't afford to get incorrect information or lose access to it; LOCKSS is designed to ensure the full functionality of online documents at a low cost which is important especially in university and government settings."

The LOCKSS project is based on JavaTM technology and Linux, and was created as an open-source, easy to use, distributed system, running on low-cost computers without central administration. Designed as an Internet appliance, the LOCKSS system preserves access to authoritative versions of Web-published materials, applying contemporary automation to the old idea of preventing loss by multiplying copies. The PC runs an enhanced Web cache that collects new issues of the e-journal and continually compares its contents with other caches on other participating computers. If files have been corrupted or altered, they can be repaired or replaced with intact copies from the publisher or from other caches.

The LOCKSS program is currently in a worldwide beta test focused on integrity, usability and software performance, including impact on network traffic. The beta software has been released as open source, and is available on:

http://sourceforge.org

More information about LOCKSS can be found at:

http://lockss.stanford.edu

For additional information on Sun's involvement with Stanford University, go to this newsletter's Web site and enter article number 4858 in the search tool. [...read more...]

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