We are thrilled to share the news that the co-founders of the LOCKSS Program, David Rosenthal and Vicky Reich, are once again being recognized for their significant contributions to the digital preservation community. This time, it's with the 2025 Paul Evan Peters Award, which is sponsored by CNI, ARL, and Educause, with additional seed funding from Microsoft and Xerox. The Peters Award acknowledges visionary work in the creation of information resources and advancement of scholarship and intellectual productivity, so David and Vicky are richly deserving of this recognition.
If there were an EGOT for the digital preservation community, in fact, Vicky and David would be close to achieving it. They and the LOCKSS Program have earned a full bouquet of awards over the years; most recently, the 2023 NDSA Excellence Award for Sustainability credited them for furnishing "enduring proof of the concept that large-scale digital preservation work can be accomplished cost-effectively and with community benefits (not vendor profits) as the primary driver." In announcing the 2025 Peters Award, CNI Executive Director Clifford Lynch dubbed LOCKSS "a stunning achievement—both technically and on a social and organizational basis—that fundamentally changed thinking about digital preservation, particularly with regard to the scholarly record. It’s stunning both in its design, which is extraordinarily sophisticated, and its execution, which has included a quarter century of advocacy and outreach."
For the LOCKSS Program team, the news of this latest award is delightful, but hardly surprising. That's because we get reminded every day of just how impactful the work of our founders has been, and just how valuable a legacy we are carrying forward as we further that advocacy and outreach. As ARL Director Andrew K. Pace states, "Victoria and David’s unwavering commitment to digital preservation and their innovative leadership with LOCKSS have made a lasting, positive impact. Their work continues to address the critical challenge of ensuring the long-term accessibility and integrity of digital content."
As the LOCKSS Program enters its third decade of operation, we support current and prospective users worldwide. We collaborate with a dozen networks in preserving digital assets that come from the biggest of academic publishers and the smallest of local historical societies. And when we meet new people at conferences, we inevitably hear "Lots of copies keep stuff safe! I love that acronym!" (Lynch concurs, positing that the catchphrase coined by Vicky and David "has become perhaps the fundamental principle of preservation in the digital environment.”)
We are looking forward to giving David and Vicky a big round of applause when they are honored with the Peters Award at the Spring 2025 CNI Membership Meeting. And we are honored to be carrying their outstanding work with the LOCKSS Program forward to meet new challenges in digital preservation!
Read more about Vicky and David and the 2025 Paul Evan Peters Award selection on the CNI news page.
