Digital Preservation and Curation: The Danger of Overlooking Software
Over the past two decades there have been extraordinary developments, enormous interest, and stunning achievements in the use of digital technologies for humanities research. The Preservation of Complex Objects: Visualisations and Simulations is a new report from POCOS that details both the nature of the new, research-based artefacts arising from such work, and of the tools and strategies required for their creation, ongoing access, and preservation.
The Software Sustainability Institute were invited to contribute to the report. Neil Chue Hong wrote up our experiences of Digital Preservation and Curation (see page 26 of the report), which discusses the danger of overlooking software when creating a plan for preserving digital objects.
The Preservation of Complex Objects: Visualisations and Simulations is the first in a series of publications from POCOS (Preservation of Complex Objects Symposia), which will cover subjects such as software art and gaming environments and virtual worlds. See the POCOS publications website for more details. The POCOS project is funded by the JISC.