LOCKSS Program Demonstrates Format Migration

[Victoria Reich <vreich@stanford.edu>]

LOCKSS PROGRAM DEMONSTRATES FORMAT MIGRATION

On November 15, 2004, The LOCKSS program demonstrated transparent format
migration of preserved Web content at the National Archives Partnerships
in Innovation Symposium, National Archives at College Park, Maryland

The LOCKSS digital preservation system collects content by crawling the
web and preserves it in the format supplied by the publisher. As standards
and formats evolve over years, browsers will presumably lose the ability
to handle content in old formats. The process of converting old content to
a newer format that browsers can render accurately is called format
migration. The LOCKSS system has designed and tested an initial
implementation of format migration for Web content that is transparent to
readers, building on the content negotiation capabilities of HTTP.

Our implementation is capable of transparently presenting content
collected in one Web format to readers in another Web format, with no
changes needed to browsers. The reader need take no special action to
cause this to happen, nor even be aware that it is happening. This appears
to be the first time that a production digital preservation system has
demonstrated transparent format migration of live content collected from
the Web for end users.

For complete technical details, a pre-print is available at
http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0411077

Information about the LOCKSS Program is available www.lockss.org or please
feel free to contact:

Vicky Reich
Director LOCKSS Program
Stanford University Libraries
vreich@stanford.edu
+1.650.725.1134