Supporting further and higher education

JISC Circular 7/05: UK LOCKSS Pilot Programme

Helen Hockx-YuProgramme Manager, JISC

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The JISC Continuing Access and Digital Preservation Strategy

• LOCKSS Pilot will be funded under the programme area Digital Preservation and Records Management

• Long-term preservation of and access to scholarly and education material is an important strategic area for JISC

• Digital preservation and records management activities guided by the JISC Continuing Access and Digital Preservation Strategy 2002-2005 and its implementation plan

• Vision– Mix of national, perhaps regional and institutional

services– Importance of records / information management

- lifecycle approach – Many stakeholders and players not solely a JISC

issue – collaboration & partnership with others

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Key Initiatives in Digital Preservation

• Feasibility, scoping studies & implementation of recommended actions

– e-journals, web resources, e-prints, e-science data, e-learning objects and materials, and information on file formats/software documentation

• Community calls– Circular 9/02: Supporting Institutional Records Management – Circular 4/04: Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in

Institutions

• National services and initiatives– AHDS, UK DA, DCC & JORUM

• Partnership activities– JISC support for and participation in the Digital Preservation

Coalition (DPC)– Co-funding of the Digital Curation Centre with the UK e-Science

Core Programme– JISC as a founder member of the UK Web Archiving Consortium– JISC / BL partnership – preservation being an important area of

cooperation and collaborative projects– A member of the European Task Force for Permanent Access to

Records of Science

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Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe

• Developed at Stanford University• An alliance of over 80 libraries and 60

publishers world-wide, working together to preserve persistent access to licensed content from publishers to libraries

• An open-source peer to peer software allowing institutions to collect, store, preserve, and archive authorised content locally

• Provides “multiplication of copies“ and allows the libraries to “own” the content they have paid for

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Why LOCKSS?

• Key area of work for JISC: assessment and development of services for continuing access of e-journals used by the community

• Need implementations of the archiving clauses in the Model Licence to guarantee continued access to licensed content

• LOCKSS is designed to run on inexpensive hardware and requires little ongoing effort to operate

• LOCKSS has the acceptance of many prominent academic publishers on the licensing and legal front

• The Pilot is a result of the UK LOCKSS workshop (2003), e-journal archiving feasibility study (2003), LOCKSS Technical Appraisal (2004) and JCIIE’s approval (2005)

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Aims and Objectives

• To raise awareness of the LOCKSS initiative• To seed a self-sustaining base of LOCKSS users

in the UK by providing the libraries with the practical help to get started and to develop the skills needed to run their LOCKSS nodes beyond the Pilot.

• To collectively preserve a major proportion of the e-journals in common use in the JISC community

• To build a centre of expertise outside the US and benefit the international LOCKSS community

• To allow the community to make an informed assessment of the desirability of future use of LOCKSS versus other alternatives

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Programme Components

• Focus on satisfying the conditions that must be met for LOCKSS-based archiving of a particular e-journal title:– the publisher has granted permission– the publishing platform for that particular title

is supported by a LOCKSS plug-in. – there is a critical mass of libraries (at least 6)

that agree to collect and preserve the title

• LOCKSS Technical Support Service (LTSS)• Publisher negotiation & Legal appraisal of the

archiving clauses in Model Licence• Collective UK membership at LOCKSS Alliance• Collection development – responsibilities of

participating libraries

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LOCKSS Technical Support Service (LTSS)

• Includes a LOCKSS Technical Support Officer (LTSO)

• Based at the Digital Curation Centre (DCC)

• Responsibilities of the LTSS include:– first line technical support– development of publisher specific plug-ins– organisation of training and awareness raising

events– coordination of survey(s) to identify non-NESLi

content of common interest– Purchase and installation of LOCKSS hardware– Representation of UK libraries at LOCKSS Alliance

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Publisher Negotiation

• Two kinds of permission required from publishers:– online permission for the LOCKSS system to crawl

the content via a LOCKSS publisher manifest (a web page on the publisher’s website that contains a specific permission statement).

– legal permission to the librarians via language in licenses or terms and conditions

• Undertaken by Content Complete Ltd• Focus on NESLi2 publishers who are not yet in

LOCKSS• Also non-NESLi publishers (to be identified by

participating libraries through survey)• Legal appraisal of the archiving clauses of JISC

Model licence to allow for LOCKSS-based archiving, to be done by JISC Services Group

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LOCKSS Alliance

• Collective UK membership jointly funded by JISC and CURL to ensure UK priorities are factored into the US-led work and its future development

• Distributes and shares the efforts to work with publishers, build collections and develop software

• Main benefits to the members include members-only premium content, plug-in applications for different publishing platforms and various training and documentation

• Allows access to the expertise of the LOCKSS team and transfer of knowledge and skills to the UK

• The UK HE will be represented at the Alliance via the LTSS

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Responsibilities of the Participating Libraries

• Use web-based administration tools to configure the institutional LOCKSS node and to collect licensed and freely available content

• Participate in survey(s) to identify and agree titles/publishers of common interest, particularly those of interest to the UK that are at risk.

• Demonstrate commitment to collection development and maintenance of their LOCKSS nodes beyond the Pilot

• Develop the necessary skills locally (taking part in training events organised by the LTSS)

• Report to funders and attend programme meetings as appropriate

• Develop an e-journal collection strategy, using LOCKSS as enabling technologies

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Benefits to the Participating Libraries

• Access to licensed content and reduced risk of losing back runs of electronic journals when subscriptions are cancelled or when journals cease publication

• Be fully supported to get started with LOCKSS • Support in acquiring valuable skills in e-

journal collection management• Opportunity to work with other libraries and

become a part of an (international) community & to support each other

• Installed hardware with suitable configuration for LOCKSS nodes and guidance in operating LOCKSS

• Training and documentation

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What Happens Beyond the Pilot?

• Libraries continue to run LOCKSS using the skills gained through the pilot

• LOCKSS requires little resources to run the benefits would have become evident to the libraries during the Pilot

• Reduced need for publisher negotiation • Technical support (if still necessary) cost

could be built into an organisation such as the DCC

• The libraries could benefit from publisher negotiations undertaken elsewhere and plug-ins developed by other libraries

• Funders will consider any further support required by the community

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Summary

• The Pilot will commence in February 2006 for 24 months

• Deadline to submit a formal response is 13:00hrs Monday 19th December 2005

• Should include a letter of support from a senior representative of the institution.

• The Pilot will recruit up to 25 HE libraries• Institutions will be notified of the outcome of

the evaluation process in the week commencing 16th January 2006

• Only responses from single institutions will be accepted

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Further Information

Helen Hockx-YuProgramme Manager Tel: 020 7848 1803Mobile: 07813 024633Email: h.hockx-yu@jisc.ac.uk

Nike HolmesPolicy and Corporate Services Tel: 0117 931 7427Email: N.Holmes@jisc.ac.uk

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How Low is “Low Cost”?

• Hardware cost £600 over 4.5 years for 1.7TB of e-journal content, equivalent of almost 90K journal/years based on an average volume of 50MB/yr

• Hardware include 1U rack-mount case, VIA EPIA 800 motherboard and CPU, 512MB of DRAM, slimline optical drive and adaptor, and three 250GB disk drives (including 2 updates during the 4.5 years)

• Monitor and keyboard can be shared between a LOCKSS node and other machines

• Human effort /year (from scratch):1 day getting started (need technical expertise)1 day updating CD images (every 6 months)1 day adding content (every six weeks)

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Who are in LOCKSS?

2005 publisher• Already in LOCKSS:

– Annual Reviews– Blackwell (on LOCKSS board but waiting for market pressure)– Nature (on LOCKSS board but waiting for market pressure)– Project Muse– OUP

• Not yet in LOCKSS:– AIP (in negotiation)– Elsevier – Cell Press– Taylor & Francis– Royal Society of Chemistry

2006 publishers• Already in LOCKSS:

– Science– British Medical Journal– Sage

• Not yet in LOCKSS:– American Chemical Society– British Psychological Society