Diffused Knowledge Immortalizes Itself: The LOCKSS Program

The LOCKSS model, 'Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe,' creates low-cost, persistent digital 'caches' of authoritative versions of http-delivered content. The LOCKSS software enables institutions to locally collect, store, preserve and archive authorized content, thus safeguarding their community's access to that content. The current version of LOCKSS software is restricted to electronic journals. Accuracy and completeness of LOCKSS caches are assured through a peer-to-peer polling and reputation system (operated through LCAP, LOCKSS' communication protocol), which is both robust and secure. LOCKSS replicas cooperate to detect and repair preservation failures. LOCKSS is designed to run on inexpensive hardware and to require almost no technical administration. The software has been under development since 1999 and is distributed as open source.