There’s a metaphor that has shaped how SPN thinks about what it means to close well: composting (Stewarding Loss, Camille Acey).
We’re talking about transformation: the deliberate return of material to the ecosystem so that it can feed what comes next. An organization that simply closes its doors, takes care of its accounts, and deactivates its website has technically complied with the legal requirements of dissolution. But an organization that treats its closure as an act of stewardship asks “what does the field need from us as we leave”?
For SPN, this has meant approaching asset disposition not as a checklist but as a values-aligned practice. The question guiding the work has not been “what do we have to do?” but “what do we owe the community that built this with us, and the people and groups that will carry the work forward?”
A Thoughtful Asset Inventory
SPN’s digital identity (its website, YouTube presence, Google Drive, project documentation, etc.) represents years of labor, relationship building, and knowledge-making. Rather than treating these materials as administrative leftovers, the sunset transition team is approaching the inventory as an archival act: an initial appraisal pass by the core team, followed by a second pass with thought-partners, building toward a comprehensive documentation guide at the end of the year.
This has raised important questions about purpose: if the goal of archiving SPN is to share the history and culture of the organization with future community organizing efforts in the field, what actually belongs in that archive? A lot of what lives in SPN’s Google Drive may not be relevant to the broader field, as it references people and projects no longer affiliated with the organization, and in some cases contains sensitive information. What should be retained privately, what should be made publicly accessible, and what can be released? The inventory process has become, in part, a process of developing policy — figuring out the answers to those questions as we go.
What has become clear through this process is just how much SPN created over the course of its tenure. The assets being inventoried span several areas central to the practice of software preservation: SPN’s own history and community governance materials; a substantial body of law and policy work including exemption guides, fair use resources, legal briefs, amicus filings, and policy letters; metadata standards including the Software Metadata Recommended Format guide; technical infrastructure research covering emulation and lab research, training and education resources ranging from symposia recordings to introductory guides and many resources documenting our collaborations around EaaSI/EAASI. Taken together, these materials represent not just SPN’s work but a significant portion of the field’s shared knowledge base, which is exactly what makes their careful disposition so important.
Building an Asset Map for the Field
One of SPN’s most significant contributions may be a resource it creates on its way out: a map of the software preservation ecosystem as SPN understood it.
When the sunset team went about creating the asset map, we drew heavily from the Institute of Educational Services’ asset mapping methodology. As they define it, asset maps document existing resources so that people can identify resources to meet their needs, leverage community strengths to achieve goals, and build partnerships. That framing fit SPN’s purpose well.
As SPN prepares to close operations at the end of 2026, the goal for the asset map is to create a resource for current and aspiring practitioners to discover SPN’s most critical outputs (publications, guides, webinars, and more) and to understand where those resources are being redistributed and who is holding space for continued access to them.
Developing the framing question
Asset mapping begins with a framing question. As the Institute of Educational Services (link) describes it, a framing question sets the direction for the mapping activity and helps elicit relevant and constructive contributions. To develop ours, we asked: What needs are driving this? What is the community actually trying to solve for? What kinds of assets matter most?
SPN’s framing questions became:
What and who was SPN? Why was it important? What did we create during our tenure? Where does the work stand now across the subcategories of our practice? Where can someone turn if they have a specific question about software preservation?
What the community told us it needs
To shape the asset map, the sunset team drew on years of membership feedback and direct conversations with practitioners. Two areas surfaced consistently as essential to the field’s continued health.
The first is legal and policy work. Advocating for exemptions and fair use, interrogating the international legal landscape, enabling institutions to expand their practice — this is work the community has named again and again as foundational.
The second is developing and tracking software preservation in institutional contexts. As Dr. Eric Kaltman, Associate Professor of Media and Technology Studies and History at the University of Alberta, noted, many of the questions he receives about software preservation are foundational ones: how to get historical systems and code to work, how to define software through metadata, who is doing what in the field, and what national or shared infrastructure for emulation exists. The resources to answer many of these questions already exist, but they are scattered. What the field needs is for them to be pulled together and made easy to find.
Looking ahead, the team also identified a set of needs likely to shape the next decade of software preservation practice: upskilling and reskilling practitioners; the technological barriers to setting up environments, particularly for institutions consolidating IT support; the need to standardize workflows and improve accessibility; the particular considerations around games and mobile emulation; advocacy for embedding software preservation into classroom teaching and learning; labor scarcity; challenges with inter-organizational collaboration; the user experience of preservation systems and how they integrate with existing tools; and the environmental and ethical implications of AI
Coming up next: A centralized asset map
As SPN’s Program Manager Chelle Sanders framed it: “I’m curious about what we can leave practitioners with to better understand the scope of the software preservation community when it’s no longer centralized within SPN, and where and how to find resources for supporting their work. Essentially, pulling together all the separate conversations we’re having into a centralized asset map.”
The map is designed to do three things: prevent reinvention of the wheel by showing what has already been done and where the work stands; highlight gaps (needs that SPN or its partners haven’t fully addressed); and help distribute SPN’s own assets more effectively by making visible where they are going and who is carrying them.
Since SPN will no longer serve as the central hub for software preservation in the US, this resource will be critical. The end product is currently envisioned as a written resource directory available for download to the public. Part of our composting workplan is to partner with key organizations whose missions focus on some aspect of SPN’s foundational work to host its reports and products, so that organizations that have living connections to people can do the ongoing maintenance work of uplifting these resources and reminding folks they exist.
What This Approach Makes Possible
Asset disposition done this way (i.e., carefully, collectively, with the field’s needs as the compass) is not just a closing task. It is a form of field-building. It asks an organization to do the hard work of understanding what it actually created, what the community actually needs, and who is best positioned to carry specific pieces forward.
A composting approach takes time. It requires careful sorting through material, making judgments about what is still generative and what has run its course, and trusting that what you put back into the ground will feed something in the future. That is the work SPN is doing through the course of its sunset.
Get in Touch
If your organization works in software preservation, digital stewardship, legal advocacy, emulation research, or related areas of cultural heritage practice, we want to hear from you.
SPN’s assets — its publications, guides, policy resources, training materials, research outputs, and more — are actively being matched with organizations and communities best positioned to carry them forward. We are looking for partners who can host, maintain, and build on this work in ways that honor the communities and labor that created it.
If you see your organization’s mission reflected in what SPN has built, or if you have ideas about where specific resources should live, we warmly invite you to reach out to SPN’s Program Manager, Chelle Sanders: chelle.sanders@softwarepreservationnetwork.org
This is the second in a series of field-facing reflections produced by the Software Preservation Network as part of its sunsetting process. To stay connected or get involved, reach out to SPN’s Program Manager Chelle Sanders: chelle.sanders@softwarepreservationnetwork.org