World Digital Preservation Day 2023
As part of our observance of World Digital Preservation Day this year, we are proud to unveil a logo for the Global LOCKSS Network (GLN) for the first time!
The GLN is the original LOCKSS network – which is one of the reasons we have chosen to highlight it for World Digital Preservation Day. The LOCKSS Program recently celebrated its 25th “birthday”; over that quarter-century, more than 100 GLN member organizations have collaborated to preserve over 13,500 journals across 700 publishers, as well as numerous books and other scholarly resources. As the GLN has matured – and as the pandemic mandated a shift away from established patterns of in-person meetings – we have recognized the need to bring this community of practice together and support it in new ways. A new GLN Web site launching at the end of the year will be among the places we showcase the GLN logo. The site will provide a dedicated space for the GLN community to share resources and tools, welcome new members, and communicate news and updates of interest. And starting today, in the Web user interface of all LOCKSS boxes in the GLN, this logo will appear alongside the LOCKSS software tortoise, identifying the box as part of the largest LOCKSS network in the world by number of participants!
About the design and the designer:
When designing a logo for a diverse, collaborative, and international community like the GLN, it really helps to have a designer who is already familiar with how the organization works and what it represents. The GLN logo was designed in-house at Stanford Libraries by a member of the UX team, Astrid Usong. Among her inspirations were the bold but simple aesthetic of the IBM logo, the pixelation of a previous version of Stanford University Press’ logo, and Edward Tufte’s visualization concept of small multiples.
The “LOCKSS” in “Global LOCKSS Network” suggests a host of different meanings, too, each with their own visual associations and symbolic connection to GLN’s preservation purpose: the locks of a canal, enabling forward passage for ships and other carriers; the locks of a medieval chained library, securing the most valuable books and information to prevent loss; and even locks of hair, the signature attribute of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory and mother of the nine muses of Greek mythology. Of this last concept, Astrid says “that ‘strand’ went nowhere, but it was interesting and fun for half a second!” (As a decidedly foodie group, the LOCKSS Program team would have been delighted to see design sketches involving lox, had Astrid proposed any…but she did not.) Early drafts evolved through final tweaks to the version you see here: A bold visual representation of the security, geographic separation, and collaborative impact of a LOCKSS-based preservation network.
For many, World Digital Preservation Day is a time to raise awareness about digital preservation as a practice, or to highlight digital preservation’s role as one of the many functions of memory institutions. Since the LOCKSS Program works on digital preservation all day, every day, on this occasion we thought we would instead share some of the abstract, creative, and fun work that goes into building and maintaining a digital preservation community. However you choose to observe it, we wish you a very happy World Digital Preservation Day.
