Initiated as a collaboration between Sun and Stanford, this project may provide a solution to the problem of collecting and maintaining permanent access to electronic scholarly publications and library collections, whose sustainability and permanency would otherwise remain largely subject to the whim of publishers. The impermanence of Web content is an issue that affects everyone, but one that is particularly relevant to libraries, said Michael A. Keller, Stanford University Librarian. Participating library computers continually poll among themselves to monitor files on their hard disks at random intervals. Part of the test will simulate the failure of some or all of the publishers. If the files have been corrupted or altered, the autonomous caching system replaces them with intact copies.
Individual libraries can also monitor the level of redundancy within the system.
Initially funded by The National Science Foundation and Sun Microsystems, the project was initiated in May 2000 and includes as test sites the libraries at Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, University of California at Berkeley, University of Tennessee and the Los Alamos National Library. The newly announced funding from the Mellon Foundation will allow for the global expansion of the project, including a second test that will include dozens of major libraries starting in April 2001. In Education Sun is a leading provider of open network computing solutions to colleges and universities around the world, powering academic, research and high performance computing systems, campus administration, digital libraries and student instruction systems. In addition, Sun is committed to connecting the world's students to the Internet, beginning with primary and secondary schools and extending to all levels of higher education. All rights reserved.