Archiving in the networked world: LOCKSS and national hosting

The purpose of this paper is to answer questions about LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) that have arisen in the context of the German National Hosting study.

The paper describes what the LOCKSS software can do and how the LOCKSS community is organized. The descriptions come from direct experience with LOCKSS and from comments by the developers.

LOCKSS offers a robust and cost‐effective mechanism to carry digital content undamaged into future centuries. It also offers a distributed network that is robust against natural, social, political or economic catastrophes at one or even several locations. Its financial and organizational philosophy avoids a single point of financial or administrative failure.

Regardless of which national hosting system is selected, the chosen system ought to have qualities similar to these.