Appropriate for semi-private preservation

When you are considering whether materials are appropriate for preservation in ADPNet, you should think of ADPNet as a semi-private preservation network. Here's what that means:

• The LOCKSS network is a Dark Archive: material that you preserve in the network is transmitted over secure Internet connections, but it is not visible to the public web. You can preserve material which is not intended for general public access.
  • For example, LOCKSS preservation is fine to provide preservation cold storage for extremely large, high-quality master files from disk imaging, scanning, or audiovisual digitization projects, even if you do not provide public web access to those masters for reasons of file size or file format constraints, or if you have a business reason like charging a fee for high-quality masters. LOCKSS preservation is fine to provide preservation cold storage not only for final, processed forms of electronic records, but it may also be appropriate as a way to preserve unprocessed or pre-processed copies of electronic materials, in weird, proprietary or non-accessible formats, as they were received before being processed for researcher access.

• However, the LOCKSS network is also a Distributed Archive: your material is preserved in the network by being harvested, stored, and synchronized within a network of preservation nodes run by other Host institutions. Materials are not visible to the public web, but they DO need to be shared with ADPNet Hosts in order for them to be preserved within the network. The machine on which the LOCKSS daemon runs is secured by IT at the institution that operates the machine. The LOCKSS daemon DOES NOT attempt to encrypt or otherwise obscure or secure the materials that it harvests for preservation. So the data is not publicized or shared with the world, but it is (by necessity) visible to people at the institutions that operate preservation nodes. IF your digital materials contain data that is confidential, private, sensitive, secure, or legally encumbered, then you MAY need to redact or encrypt the data on your own systems BEFORE you stage your materials for preservation.
  • For example, suppose you have a series of CD-ROMs donated to a private collection. You preserve and process the digital content by taking disc images of the CD-ROMs and mirror copies of the file system on each disc. One of the CD-ROMs in the set includes a personal finance spreadsheet with PII and account numbers for the donor's business partners, which you are obliged to keep confidential and redact from public access copies of the materials. This material may not be appropriate for preserving in ADPNet at all; or IF you want to preserve material like it in a LOCKSS network, then you should do so only AFTER you have packaged it in a format that protects the data with strong encryption on your own systems, so that the LOCKSS preservation nodes can copy the data but cannot decrypt or interpret its contents.