Access 2017 Conference Day 1 #accessYXE Notes Sessions 4-7
Session 4: Excavating the 80s: Strategies for Restoring Digital Artifacts From the First Era of Personal Computing - John Durno "Avoiding technological quicksand" Rothenberg presentation review: hard copy, standards, computer museums, format migration, emulation. Ultimately he argued all but emulation would be of limited utility. David Bearman's "Reality and Chimeras in the Preservation of Electronic Records" in 1999 D-Lib. OAIS Functional Model. Rothenberg's emulation still at work - see Internet Archive, see code4lib paper (missed cite), Preserving and Emulating Digital Art Objects (Cornell white paper). Usually case-based choosing whatever works, not prescripted. Case Study 1: AtariWriter - no modern software that can read or convert. but if you can play games on an old platform, someone has probably written an emulator for it. Locate, install, configure an open source emulator. Tracking down old software not usually that difficult, though legality ...