About the Webinar
The digitization of resources can provide expanded access to information as well as a preservation mechanism for now-fragile materials. Preserving the digital copy of the resource is an issue now being addressed, but what about the software used to create digital files? How can software on media which can no longer be read -- or no longer be read easily -- be preserved? If that software can’t be accessed, what happens to the material created by, and only read by, that software?
Progress has been made in formulating standards for the preservation and description of digital materials and a framework for addressing digital item preservation has been proposed. Despite, however, meetings such as the Library of Congress’ “Preserving.exe: Toward a National Strategy for Preserving Software,” no formal standard or framework yet exists for software digitization and preservation. This webinar will feature three presenters who will speak on aspects of software digitization and preservation, including a how-to approach (technical aspects), a metadata component, and observations from the field as part of the continuing discussion on the state of the field and the need for standardization.
Event Sessions
Introduction
Speaker
Software artifacts: Migration and Emulation
Speaker
Computer files in formats that are no longer used can often be either converted to modern formats, or run on imitations of the machines they were designed for. In either case they still need to be cataloged and checked, but the joint techniques of migration and emulation should let us recover important old files. It's relatively hard to find examples of significant digital losses, and when you do the problems come down to having insufficiently many copies on fragile media or to simple neglect.
This talk will discuss the principles behind both migration (changing to a new format) and emulation (imitating an old machine).
Emulation in practise: Emulation as a Service at Yale University Library: Lessons learnt and plans for the future
Speaker
No (You Can't Expect To Run Your Files Just Because You Saved Them)
Speaker
Presentation Link: http://tinyurl.com/ippolito-niso2015
Storage media are the Maginot Line of digital preservation. To defend against the corruption of the 1s and 0s that account for most 21st-century culture, the guardians of heritage have erected a bulwark built of hard drives, flash memory, the cloud, and even futuristic technologies like DNA storage. Yet even if we manage to save our bits unchanged for eternity, obsolescence will circumvent our fixed fortifications unless we remember how to reconstruct the software, hardware, and cultural environments that originally gave these bits meaning.
To adapt to this larger threat means recognizing the limits of fixity and looking to more performative models of preservation. Drawing on themes from his 2014 book Re-collection (http://re-collection.net) co-authored with Richard Rinehart, Jon Ippolito examines how proliferative preservation has rescued a broad range of culture, from videogames to sculptures to errant spacecraft.
Additional Information
- Registration closes at 12:00 p.m. (ET) on May 13, 2015. Cancellations made by May 6, 2015 will receive a refund, less a $25 cancellation. After that date, there are no refunds.
- Registrants will receive detailed instructions about accessing the webinar via e-mail the Monday prior to the event. (Anyone registering between Monday and the close of registration will receive the message shortly after the registration is received, within normal business hours.) Due to the widespread use of spam blockers, filters, out of office messages, etc., it is your responsibility to contact the NISO office if you do not receive login instructions.
- If you have not received your Login Instruction email by 10:00 a.m. (ET) on the Tuesday before the webinar, at please contact the NISO office or email Juliana Wood, Educational Programs Manager at jwood@niso.org for immediate assistance.
- Registration is per site (access for one computer) and includes access to the online recorded archive of the webinar. You may have as many people as you like from the registrant's organization view the webinar from that one connection. If you need additional connections, you will need to enter a separate registration for each connection needed.
- If you are registering someone else from your organization, either use that person's e-mail address when registering or contact Juliana Wood to provide alternate contact information.
- Library Standards Alliance (LSA) members receive one free webinar connection as part of their membership and DO NOT need to register for the event for this free connection. Your webinar contact will receive the login instructions the Monday before the event. You may have as many people as you like from the member's library view the webinar from that one connection. If you need additional connections beyond the free one, then you will need to enter a paid registration (at the member rate) for each additional connection required.
- Webinar presentation slides and Q&A will be posted to the site following the live webinar.
- Registrants and LSA member webinar contacts will receive an e-mail message containing access information to the archived webinar recording within 48 hours after the event. This recording access is only to be used by the registrant's or member's organization.