Evaluation of the JISC UK LOCKSS Pilot

Abstract

This report provides an evaluation of the UK LOCKSS pilot project as it reaches the end of its pilot phase. LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) is an international community-based archiving initiative led by Stanford University in the US with over 170 member libraries worldwide, archiving content from over 200 publishers. It is a community-based archiving service operating on open-source software, giving libraries control over their own archived content with the emphasis on low cost and low maintenance. In March 2006, JISC in partnership with the Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles (CURL) funded membership of a collective UK LOCKSS Alliance for 24 selected UK HE libraries. The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) at the department of HATII within the University of Glasgow received funding to set up the UK LOCKSS Technical Support Service to provide technical advice and general support to pilot members and Content Complete Ltd. (CCL) were funded to negotiate with NESLi2 and other publishers to allow LOCKSS-based archiving. The UK LOCKSS pilot is particularly innovative as the first effort to establish a country wide LOCKSS network. The study found that the UK LOCKSS pilot project had achieved its overall aim of setting up a UK LOCKSS Alliance of 30 HE libraries, but that in relation to the detailed aims and objectives there were a number of