Inititated 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. Several universities and libraries will be testing the solution this year. Upon completion, the solution will be made available for free download at Stanford's website. Together, Stanford, Sun and NSF are developing a solution which will make it possible to maintain electronic academic publications and library collections over long periods of time,'' said Michael Keller, chief librarian, Stanford University and publisher of HighWire Press.