Preserving Culture in Times of Crisis: How CLOCKSS and CCLP Strengthen Global Cultural Resilience

Libraries and cultural heritage institutions safeguard the memory and identity of communities, nations, and societies. Yet in times of war, natural disaster, political instability, and economic disruption, these institutions can become highly vulnerable. The recent CLOCKSS webinar explored this reality through the experience of Ukrainian libraries during the ongoing conflict. It also highlighted the importance of proactive infrastructure and collaboration through initiatives like CLOCKSS and the Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP).

The session began with an update from Natalia Petrenko, director of Korolenko Kharkiv State Scientific Library, which has continued operating through some of the most challenging conditions imaginable. Since 2022, more than a thousand libraries in Ukraine have suffered damage or destruction, and millions of cultural materials have been displaced or lost. Despite these conditions, Ukrainian librarians have continued to digitize collections, safeguard rare materials, and maintain access to information for the public. The heroic efforts of our Ukrainian library colleagues demonstrate their extraordinary dedication and resilience, and they also reveal systemic fragilities in how cultural memory is preserved.

Preservation cannot depend solely on local capacity. Safeguarding cultural heritage requires support from networks, partners, and infrastructure that extends beyond national borders. This is where organizations such as CLOCKSS and initiatives such as CCLP play an important role.

The experience of Ukraine emphasizes why resilience is essential. Cultural heritage can be lost rapidly but rebuilding it can take decades. The CLOCKSS international distributed digital archive provides a form of continuity and security that does not rely on physical access to collections or local storage conditions. It ensures that the scholarly record remains intact and openly available for future generations, regardless of circumstances on the ground. This model of distributed preservation is not only important during acute crises. It ensures long-term sustainability by removing single points of failure, reducing the risk of permanent loss, and ensuring that responsibility is shared across a global community.

While CLOCKSS focuses on preserving digital scholarships, the Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP) via its platform (CYCLOPS) works to strengthen coordination in the stewardship of physical and digital cultural materials. The project aims to help libraries move from isolated, reactive responses to shared, strategic, and proactive planning for mutual support during crisis.

The challenges highlighted in Ukraine reveal that many libraries, when faced with crisis, need contributions, resources, space, and support, and ideally this would be delivered in a calm and well-organized way in response to actual needs, addressing also institutional limitations and abilities. Unfortunately, there is no such international coordination mechanism at present and so the volume of offers of assistance in myriad forms through myriad channels can itself be overwhelming. CCLP addresses this by developing shared infrastructure, including a metadata commons and collaborative decision-making tools (CYCLOPS), that enable institutions to jointly identify what materials are most at risk, what should be preserved, and how responsibilities should be distributed. This collaborative approach helps reduce duplication, prevent gaps in preservation, and supports focus and prioritization. Instead of individual libraries working alone, CCLP allows for coordinated action supported by data, shared tools, and collective commitment.

The crisis in Ukraine demonstrates that cultural memory is vulnerable not only in conflict zones, but anywhere infrastructure is fragile or funding is uncertain. Fires, floods, extreme weather, political unrest, and institutional restructuring are increasingly frequent. The preservation of cultural heritage, therefore, requires systems that are designed for continuity in unpredictable conditions.

Together, CLOCKSS and CCLP contribute to a foundation of cultural resilience. CLOCKSS safeguards the scholarly record by keeping content securely distributed and recoverable across a global network, ensuring continuity even in times of crisis. CCLP complements this by strengthening the capacity of libraries to plan and act collectively, coordinating preservation decisions rather than leaving institutions to work in isolation. By reducing dependence on any single storage location or organization, both initiatives help protect cultural memory against disruption. Ultimately, they support long-term access to knowledge as a shared global responsibility, sustained through cooperation rather than individual effort. In the coming months, the two initiatives plan on co-testing the infrastructure to allow such work to become integral to libraries worldwide.

The Ukrainian experience brings urgency and clarity to these efforts, but the implications extend globally. Cultural heritage preservation is not only a technical task; it is a commitment to the future. It requires preparation, infrastructure, coordination, and collective stewardship.