Decentralized digital preservation: the LOCKSS initiative and shadow libraries
Zakayo Kjellström
Online Information Review, Vol. 49, No. 8, pp.62-81

This study begins by explaining the co-venture between the Stanford University and Sun Labs: Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe or LOCKSS. It aims at assisting libraries in maintaining, owning and preserving digital journals through decentralized digital repositories. Based on this technique of preservation, this study aims at illuminating how illicit repositories for literature, so-called shadow libraries, leverage similar methods to sustain their existence. The study does so by viewing the web of shadow libraries as an ecology, examining their interrelations and their sustainability in the digital realm.

This study is inspired by webometric approaches, but it instead focuses on link structures rather than number of links, emphasizing the existence of connections rather than their weight. The data were collected using Hyphe, a user-centric Web Crawler, which maps the connections between a predetermined set of web addresses. This approach is informed by theoretical understandings from both platform and infrastructure studies with the intention of providing insights the mechanisms of decentralization and centralization which constitute the proposed shadow library ecology.

LOCKSS inspired methodology is found to play a crucial role in sustaining shadow libraries over extended periods. By creating multiple copies and creating avenues for the possibility of users to create multiple copies, shadow libraries seemingly secure their existence by leveraging the fundamental aspects of piracy itself: copies.

This study uses digital methods to unpack the dynamic of shadow libraries, showing how they infuse technology with their ideology to ensure digital preservation and broader access to knowledge.