Overview

The Software Preservation Network strives to empower the global community of information stewardship professionals to make decisions about technological infrastructure that are in the best interests of their organizations. Some of our affiliated projects are technologically foregrounded, supporting the advancement of available, open-sourced tooling; SPN members often serve as first round beta testers for software preservation and reuse; and the SPN Technological Infrastructure Working Group is actively working to document and characterize the broad variation in digital infrastructure represented by the software preservation community. 

Working Group

The Technological Infrastructure Working Group is responsible for understanding, comparing and articulating the infrastructural implications of different software preservation and access approaches. This charge may include specifications for computing configurations needed to run common packages used in the preservation environment, or the creation of documentation necessary to make existing software packages more usable. This group is interested in engaging members of the digital preservation ecosystem in experimentation with existing tools for access and preservation of software in an effort to establish a community-driven development roadmap that serves the broadest spectrum of users.

Coordinators: Eric Kaltman, California State University Channel Islands; Winnie Schwaid-Lindner, Louisiana State University

Members:Alex Garnett, Simon Fraser University; Larry M Masinter, Interlisp.org; Talya Cooper, New York University; Drey Jonathan, New York Public Library

Past Members: Andrew Berger, Stanford University; Nick Krabbenhoeft, New York Public Library; Vicky Rampin, New York University; Nick Krabbenhoeft, New York Public Library; Dragan Espenschied, Rhizome; Matt Arnold, UK National Archives; Ashley Blewer, Artefactual Systems; Seth Anderson, Yale University; Steve Marks, University of Toronto; Charles Anthony

Current goals:

  • Research existing and emerging software preservation infrastructures at cultural heritage institutions
  • Identify common strategies and challenges for building software preservation infrastructure
  • Synthesize findings from interviews of software preservation practitioners
  • Share findings and facilitate discussion with the community via conference presentations and publications
  • Share documentation gathered from the software preservation community

Related Resources & Products

Scaling Software Preservation and Emulation

This episode will explore current programmatic and project based initiatives to create the processes and infrastructure that will support a growing number of software (re)use cases/organizational users. Guests will highlight challenges and opportunities associated with scaling an institutional software preservation …Continue Scaling Software Preservation and Emulation

Resources, Webinars

Envisioning Local Services

This purpose of the Envisioning Local Services exercise is to help your organization consider the specifics of the local service environment and create a list of short, medium and long-term goals that will help to bring software preservation and emulation …Continue Envisioning Local Services

Resources, Templates