For Publishers
From LOCKSS
Contents |
[edit] What is the LOCKSS Program
The LOCKSS Program (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) is an international initiative that provides libraries with the tools and support for easy and sustainable preservation of today's web-published materials for tomorrow's readers.
Librarians need to know that the digital content they acquire today will not disappear when they cancel subscriptions, and that their electronic collections can be preserved and accessed by readers far into the future. Publishers need to know that the integrity of their web-based content will remain unchanged and available in perpetuity -- even if its own web sites are no longer available. The LOCKSS Program was formed in response to these needs and concerns.
[edit] Why Publishers Should Join LOCKSS
- Free!
Publishers pay no fee to join the LOCKSS Program. Over 300 publishers have already joined.
- Cost-effective for libraries
Membership in LOCKSS is inexpensive for libraries and requires minimal effort to set-up.
- Preservation invisible to readers
LOCKSS does not re-distribute content nor does it interfere with traffic or “hits” to the publisher’s site. Only when a URL on a publisher's web site is unavailable will a library's LOCKSS box deliver that URL on-the-fly to the end-user.
- Digital content preserved, not re-packaged
LOCKSS preserves the original state of the content, right down to publisher branding. With LOCKSS, the content is preserved at its original URL -- exactly as it looks on the publisher’s site today.
- On-demand content migration
The LOCKSS system migrates file formats forward in time to ensure tomorrow’s readers can access the content. Individual files are migrated only when required for a reader's access and content is presented using the most current conversion technology.
- LOCKSS' award-winning open source software is OAIS-compliant
Winner of the 2004 Association for Computing Machinery's award for best research.
[edit] Making Your Titles LOCKSS Compliant
Publishers who wish to participate in the LOCKSS Program need to make their titles LOCKSS compliant. To do this, two kinds of permissions are required, permission to:
- Librarians to collect, preserve, and provide access to the content.
- LOCKSS software to crawl, to collect, and to preserve the content.
[edit] Permission to Librarians
Publishers must give librarians permission to collect, preserve, and provide access to their content. The language suggested below is for publishers to add to their institutional terms and conditions statements or site licenses. This permission is granted to all libraries (exceptional circumstances not withstanding) and is not negotiated institution by institution. This suggested license language permits libraries to:
- Collect and preserve currently accessible materials;
- Use material consistent with original license terms;
- Provide copies to other appliances for purposes of audit and repair.
[edit] Suggested License Language for Subscription Materials
"Publisher acknowledges that Licensee participates in the LOCKSS system for archiving digitized publications. Licensee may perpetually use the LOCKSS system to archive and restore the Licensed Materials, so long as Licensee's use is otherwise consistent with this Agreement. Publisher further acknowledges and agrees that, for the purpose of repairing damage to or loss of another LOCKSS system's copy of Licensed Materials, Licensee's LOCKSS system may make Licensed Materials available to that other LOCKSS system provided that the other LOCKSS system had previously proven to Licensee's system that it had the same Licensed Materials."
[edit] For Freely Available Materials
"Publisher perpetually authorizes LOCKSS members to archive and restore [our publication] through the LOCKSS system."
[edit] Permission to the LOCKSS Software
Permission is granted to the LOCKSS software through a web page called a LOCKSS publisher manifest (example). A publisher manifest permits the software to crawl, collect, and preserve the content. It also lists the top level URLs so the crawler knows where to start the collection process. A publisher manifest is needed for each Archival Unit to be preserved through the LOCKSS system. For subscription content, an Archival Unit is often defined as a volume. For freely available content, an Archival Unit is often the entire title. Putting Up a Manifest Page
[edit] Online License Language
The LOCKSS system requires the manifest page contain either a suitable Creative Commons license, or, one of the following texts:
"LOCKSS system has permission to collect, preserve, and serve this Archival Unit."
"LOCKSS system has permission to collect, preserve, and serve this open access Archival Unit."
[edit] Suggested LOCKSS Branding
We encourage you to add the LOCKSS logo and statement below to your web site. This lets your customers know that your content is already LOCKSS-compliant and available to be collected and preserved by authorized subscribers.
"The LOCKSS system preserves [publisher name here] at research libraries worldwide."
[edit] Statistics
We suggest subscription publishers filter LOCKSS collection statisitcs from user statistics reported to libraries. Your site will see requests from LOCKSS boxes in two situations: when it collects content to preserve, and whenever a user requests a page.
The former do not reflect user page views, so you should exclude them from your usage statistics. The two situations can be distinguished by examining the request headers.
Requests that have a "user-agent" header with the value "LOCKSS cache" are part of the collection process and may be excluded from your usage statistics. These will occur in clusters, whenever any LOCKSS box crawls for new content, which they each do at approximately 2 week intervals. They may also occur sporadically at other times, to repair missing or damaged content.
Requests (from LOCKSS boxes) that do not include this user-agent header mean that a user, proxying through the LOCKSS box, has requested that page. These requests will contain a Via header (see http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html) identifying the particular LOCKSS box. LOCKSS always forwards such requests on to the publisher so that you can count them. If the LOCKSS box has the content (because it has previously collected it), it adds an if-modified-since header to the request, and if your server returns a 304 (Not Modified) response (or does not respond within a short time) it will serve that content to the user. If your site returns content, that content will always be served to the user.
[edit] Costs
The LOCKSS software carries an open source license and is made available at no cost.
