The UK LOCKSS Alliance is membership organisation and cooperative activity of UK libraries that are committed to identifying, negotiating, and building local archives of key material for librarians and academic scholars. These terms cover a three year period, with opt-out.
By joining the UK LOCKSS Alliance, libraries participate in a collaborative archiving community. Libraries take custody of digital assets and manage local collections while sharing the costs of the technological infrastructure between the wider UK and global library community. More than 9,000 e-journals from over 500 publishers are now committed to the LOCKSS initiative. A complete list of publishers and volumes is available.
Once integrated with an institution's link resolver system, content preserved in a LOCKSS box is available for continuous access. This includes:
- Short term backup when a publisher's site is temporarily unavailable due to (for example) a power outage
- Post-cancellation access when a library cancels a subscription to an e-journal and wishes to continue access to the resource
- Preservation access following a "trigger event" when the content is no longer available from the publisher. This can happen when publication of individual e-journals are ceased and taken offline, or when a publisher goes out of business and discontinues its website
Background
LOCKSS was initiated in 1999 to provide libraries with the tools and support to easily and inexpensively take custody of the assets for they pay for and to build local collections of key scholarly material.
LOCKSS gives libraries perpetual access rights when needed, without affecting the daily relationship between the library and publisher.
The UK LOCKSS Alliance was launched in August 2008 as a membership organisation following a successful two-year Jisc-funded pilot involving 30 libraries in UK higher education.
Technical advice and general support for the UK LOCKSS Alliance is led by EDINA. A governing Steering Committee comprised of librarians at participating institutions ensures the UK LOCKSS Alliance is working towards and meeting community expectations and requirements.
Additional Costs
The CentOS 6 LOCKSS CD uses the 64-bit version of CentOS Basic Server installation package. It will not work on older hardware that only runs 32-bit architecture. We recommend installing LOCKSS on a dedicated workstation, server or virtual machine with the following characteristics:
- A 64-bit capable x86 Intel compatible dual-core CPU. A quad-core CPU is preferred.
- A minimum of 8GB of memory
- A bootable CD or DVD drive
The amount of disk space you need is dependent on how much content in the LOCKSS network you intend to preserve. Over time the LOCKSS box will fill its disk capacity.
The LOCKSS Linux installation will attempt to partition your disks using software RAID (if you have two or more disks), which improves the availability of your LOCKSS box by storing your data redundantly across multiple hard disks. In some cases the use of software RAID is inappropriate and a modified installation method should be used.
Standalone Servers: You should choose a solution that can host many separate drives. A typical LOCKSS box will have four hard drives. Modern 2U servers can hold 8 or 12 hard drives - these are preferable because they can use more disks.
Virtual Servers: Virtual servers normally use an SAN or other type of network storage device. If these devices are configured with Hardware RAID, the automatic software RAID configuration should not be used. The CD will allocate 8GB on your virtual hard disk for Linux, another 8GB for swap, and any remaining space will be used for data filesystem(s).
Staff resources are required to administer the system, typically requiring the involvement of an e-Resources Manager (or Assistant) to manage the collection and an IT System Administrator to manage the hardware and software administration. Staff allocation is typically in the order of a few hours per month (max).
To discuss options around staffing and hardware, please contact edina@ed.ac.uk.
