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This article reports on a symposium of the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries for long-term availability of royalty-bearing digital content (i.e. licensed content) and summarises the papers presented at the symposium and the discussion phases between the lectures. Starting from a statement on the reasons of the consortium to deal with issues of long-term availability of royalty-bearing content (looking for a technical and organisational solution to ensure post-cancellation-access to various electronic journals for the consortium member libraries) the state of digital preservation activities in some European countries is outlined (Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, France, Italy, Great Britain). The two long-term-preservation projects LOCKSS and Portico are described in terms of their concepts, their organisational structures and their modes of operation. Advantages and disadvantages of both projects are shown through their comparison. The implementation of a LOCKSS test-installation at the Library of ETH Zurich is briefly outlined and the perspective of a major academic publishing house (Springer) on the issue of digital preservation is reported. The event as a whole is being evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]