LOCKSS Plugin

Every Archival Unit staged for preservation on the LOCKSS network is associated with a small "plugin" file when it is added to the network. The LOCKSS Plugin is small file containing settings and rules which tell the LOCKSS daemon how to find and harvest all the content that you have collected into the Archival Unit.

Plugins are encoded in a standardized XML file format. These are ultimately defined by you as the Publisher of the Archival Unit. You can prepare a customized plugin when you first stage an Archival Unit, or you can link several Archival Units to the same pre-existing plugin, if they are each organized according to the same filing system.

For information or hands-on help with preparing a plugin for the first time, ADPNet Members should contact the Technical Policy Committee.

From Plugins and Manifest Pages

PLUGIN: an XML file containing a set of rules or instructions that tell LOCKSS what content to harvest as well how and where to find it. Defining these rules is a function of the publisher.

From Getting Started with LOCKSS: A Step-by-Step Guide

The plugin is a brief set of instructions that tell the LOCKSS daemon which files to harvest from the Web server. Here is a copy of Auburn University’s “generic” plugin for ingesting content into ADPNet.

It's pretty plain vanilla, but it's been working for us. It basically tells the LOCKSS daemon to go to the AU's base URL, find the manifest, and harvest everything found in that folder (including sub-folders). You may be able to use this as-is. Check with the LOCKSS support folks to see if it will work for your collections/AUs.

To look at the generic plugin and/or use it as a template, open it in a program (like Dreamweaver or Notepad++) that displays xml and/or html. There’s an annotated version (with explanations of the various parts) on the ADPNet site at http://www.adpn.org/docs/pdf/ADPNAnnotation.pdf.