NBK and JT met with Jody to discuss ETD preservation, the LOCKSS project and the metadata page modifications that we would like to see done at the point of cataloging.

• LOCKSS: Jody explained that the ETD-LOCKSS project is very close to going into production and that 9 institutions are presently participating. LOCKSS is an access preservation system. It would be possible to have a Controlled LOCKSS (CLOCKSS) for in-house use only, but it would require at least 2 servers and probably as many as 5. A consideration for using LOCKSS for preservation of ETDs is that the withheld dissertations might not be cached until they are released (although there may be ways to work around this). Jody suggested that if we continue to do CDROM's that the procedure could be scripted to make it more automated in that several CDROM's could be burned at once.
• Since MCL was unable to attend the meeting with Jody, she emailed him with her questions. Those questions and Jodys responses are as follows:
  • Can you provide some background on the decision to use CDROM's for preservation? Was this a decision of Special Collections or Administration or?
    • Jody responded: The original decision was made by Marice Wolfe and myself. It was (and is) a compromise until better preservation methods come along and it also maintains the role of the university archive in holding a copy of the dissertation--(even though to my mind the "original" copy is the original file on the server--still I understand that there are circumstances in which that copy could be changed or corrupted and having a separate authoritative copy would be useful . . . .). We DO have tape backups of all files on the server, but these are for disaster recovery purposes not for preservation.
  • Metadata page. We asked Jody if the contents of the metadata page is owned by the Graduate School and if we would have to get permission from them to add subject headings and author authorized headings. He said that the page is not really owned by anyone, but that we would need to consult with the Graduate School before deciding on adding data to that page. He cautioned that data should be added only to the existing fields of the page, since any new fields would have to be formatted according to standards. It is our opinion that using the existing fields would be workable as long as the cataloging data is added after the ETD is approved, to prevent students from changing it. The Project Team will pursue these ideas with Liz Leis when we meet with her after commencement.
• Notes from Nancy Boggess-Korekach
  • On Sept. 15, 2006 the following corrections to above information were submitted by Victoria Reich, Director of LOCKSS Program, Stanford University:
    • LOCKSS is OAIS compliant
    • http://www.lockss.org/lockss/OAIS
    • LOCKSS migrates formats as required
    • http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january05/rosenthal/01rosenthal.html
    • LOCKSS continually audits and repairs the data. See,
    • http://www.lockss.org/lockss/How_It_Works
    • and a myriad of technical papers --
    • http://www.lockss.org/lockss/Publications