1. CourseWork, the Course Web Site Development Tool for Stanford Faculty

CourseWork, the system for creating and managing class Web sites, is now part of the teaching infrastructure for Stanford University. Developed by the Academic Computing staff of SUL/AIR, CourseWork lets instructors set up a Web site with a home page, announcements, readings, a dynamic syllabus and schedule, a discussion forum, and on-line quizzes and problem sets.

CourseWork was made available to faculty this quarter and already there are over 150 course Web sites. More than 350 faculty, TAs, and staff from 35 departments or schools and about 2700 students have registered to use the system.

CourseWork is being developed as part of the Open Knowledge Initiative (http://web.mit.edu/OKI/). In this two-year project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a consortium of universities led by MIT and Stanford are collaborating to build the next generation of teaching and learning tools. For more information about CourseWork, see:

A weekly series highlighting digital resources, Scholars' Workshops will resume winter quarter, beginning Jan 16 and ending March 20. However, presenters are needed for Spring quarter. Take this opportunity to outreach to faculty and graduate students by informing them of resources in your subject area. To volunteer, contact Malgorzata Schaefer, mschaefe@stanford.edu.

For more information, see the current schedule at http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/green/scholars_workshops.html

3. LOCKSS: Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe

Stanford Releases LOCKSS Project User Interface and Participant Map

Palo Alto, CA January 12, 2002. Stanford University Libraries has released two new resources as part of its LOCKSS digital preservation project (http://lockss.stanford.edu/). One of them is a demo of the user interface to be used by libraries participating in the LOCKSS system. The other is an interactive online world map showing the status of the 60 test caches at 46 libraries
worldwide. LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), provides a strategy for long-term preservation by systematically caching content in a self-correcting P2P network.

This project, midway through the beta testing of the LOCKSS software, enables libraries to maintain high integrity persistent caches of electronic journal content to which they have subscribed. Using a decentralized, peer-to-peer network of like holdings at other participating libraries, the LOCKSS system assures that libraries can retain indefinite access to subscribed journal issues, even if the publisher's online site goes down -even if the publisher goes out of business. This addresses one of the fundamental barriers to the acceptance of online journals on the part of libraries, namely, the issue of assuring long-term access to content.

The demo of the user interface (available at http://lockss1.stanford.edu/uidemo/ ) shows the administrative tools participating libraries will use to control and monitor their local cache. Its features include:

1. Journal Status, which reports the current condition of the local copy of each cached journal and when it was last updated, as well as the number of copies the installation can detect among all the LOCKSS caches. If problems are detected, the local copy will fix itself by comparing itself to other copies on the network. No action is required.
2. Journal Setup, which allows the library to determine often the system crawls the publisher's web site for new content and sets values for when to email the library's system administrator about such things as insufficient other caches detected or that it can no longer find the publisher's web site.
3. Journal Access Control, which determines which IP address ranges are authorized to use the local cache.

This user interface includes significant improvements over previous versions and is the result of consulting with and feedback from some of the early sites.

The world map (see http://sul-lockss18.stanford.edu:8080/GlobalCacheMonitor ) displays information about the success of packet data transmission, by journal, for each participating beta test
library and relative "reputation" data (regarding the integrity of previously transmitted data). The map may be viewed at a global level or zoomed in to continent-wide. This tool applies to the beta test network only, as in the eventual production system, there will not be a central agent that "knows" every installation of a journal cache; this is a critical security feature to prevent tampering or censorship.

The current beta test configuration includes 60 caches at 46 libraries and two scholarly journals. The system has been in continuous operation for over six months. The fault-tolerance of the system has been amply demonstrated: two beta caches suffered catastrophic disk failures. Both were able to restart with new, empty disks and recover their content automatically.

Numerous publishers have expressed strong support for the LOCKSS project. They are particularly happy that the system shows the potential to preserve digital materials now, with current publishing systems. No new standards or infrastructure is required. The cost of entry is low, the payoffs promise to be high.

For a list of beta test libraries and publishers endorsing the LOCKSS project and caching solution, see http://lockss.stanford.edu/projectstatus.htm

The LOCKSS project is supported by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Contact: Vicky Reich, (650) 725-1134, vreich@stanford.edu

4. Paid Holidays for 2002

You're eligible to receive eleven paid holidays throughout the year. Your scheduled holidays for 2002 are:

• New Year's Day - Tuesday, 1/1/02
• Martin Luther King Jr.'s Day - Monday, 1/21/02
• Presidents' Day - Monday, 2/18/02
• Memorial Day - Monday, 5/27/02
• Independence Day - Thursday, 7/4/02
• Labor Day - Monday, 9/2/02
• Thanksgiving - Thur/Fri, 11/28-29/02
• Winter Break - Tues/Wed, 12/24-25/02
• Your Birthday - Any day agreed upon between 1/2/02 and 12/31/02

For further information, visit http://benefitsu.stanford.edu/time/time_paidholidays.html

Branner Library is pleased to announce the addition of two new part-time staff members. Both were hired as part of the recently awarded California State Library grant to catalog the maps and field notebooks from the Stanford Geological Survey. The Survey lasted from 1895-1988.

Miquel Fernandez is a scanning specialist and will be using this expertise on the SGS project. He previously was a scanning specialist with the Digital Interlibrary Loan Division at Green. He has also worked as a graphic designer. While at ETAK in Menlo Park, he scanned, designed, digitized and maintained satellite navigation-ready maps.

Michael Powers will be in charge of cataloging on the project. He comes to us from San Jose State University where he recently received his MLIS. While there he worked as a music cataloger at the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies. He has also done library work at Adobe Systems, Inc. and the College of Notre Dame Library.

Please join me in welcoming both Miquel and Mike to SUL/AIR.

SUL/AIR has no new positions this week.

For a complete description of other open positions within SUL/AIR, visit the Human Resources Web site at:

Human Resources Web site.