This article describes the UK LOCKSS Pilot Programme, an initiative funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in partnership with the Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles (CURL).The pilot directly engages a number of selected UK HE institutions in trialling the LOCKSS technology for e-journal archiving and preservation. LOCKSS (for Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) is an initiative that has been developed by Stanford University Libraries. It involves an alliance of over 80 libraries and 60 publishers worldwide, working together to preserve persistent access to licensed e-journal content from publishers to libraries.The pilot is funded under JISC’s development programme area ‘digital preservation and records management’.This article describes the rationale to establish the pilot pro- gramme, the aims and objectives and, in detail, the individual components of the programme.