Resources

SPN is an active community of practice with a growing library of resources for practitioners and organizations aiming to build capacity for software preservation.

Quarterly Community Forums

The purpose of the Quarterly Community Forums is to bring together colleagues across professional and disciplinary communities to participate in an hour-long discussion on topics related to software curation, preservation and reuse.

Submit forum questions and/or topics →

View Community Forum Notes →

Guides

In collaboration with strategic partners, the Software Preservation Network produces guides that empower practitioners and organizations to make informed decisions.

Copyright Guide for Scientific Software

About the Guide This guide covers how to make it easier for others to use your software and how to build on the software that others have written. Today, science involves software. And although many scientists understand that their work …Continue Copyright Guide for Scientific Software →

Guides, Resources

A Preservationists Guide to the DMCA Exemption for Software Preservation

About the Guide A Joint Product of the Software Preservation Network and the Cyberlaw Clinic @ the Berkman Klein Center The 1201 exemption for “computer programs” went into effect on October 28, 2018 and will last until October 28th, 2021. …Continue A Preservationists Guide to the DMCA Exemption for Software Preservation →

Guides, Resources

Presentations

Software Preservation Network members, affiliated project staff, and backbone staff frequently give presentations to audiences in-person and virtual, large and small. As part of a broader outreach and communication strategy, presentations are one crucial way that SPN can grow the community of practice.

Towards a Universal Virtual Interactor (UVI) for Digital Objects

Presentation given at iPRES 2019  

Presentations, Resources

Participatory Design for Software Preservation and Emulation Services

Presentation given at the International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES) 2018

Presentations, Resources

Complex Data Sets, Software Preservation, and Emulation: A distributed approach to long-term care

Presentation given at Research Data Archiving & Preservation (RDAP) Summit 2018

Presentations, Resources

Preparation and Process: Software Preservation and Emulation for Research Data

Emulation is now a practical strategy for preservation and access of software and  digital objects in stewarding research data collections. A growing software  preservation community is defining good/best practice and developing open  source tools that utilize emulation as a central …Continue Preparation and Process: Software Preservation and Emulation for Research Data →

Presentations, Resources

Building a Leadership Network Among NDSR Cohorts Panel Discussion

Building a Leadership Network Among NDSR Cohorts Panel Discussion, NDSR Symposium, Washington, D.C.

Presentations, Resources

Software Sustainability and Preservation: Implications for Long-term Access to Digital Heritage

Software Sustainability and Preservation: Implications for Long-term Access to Digital Heritage (p.294), iPRES, Bern, Switzerland

Presentations, Resources

Introduction to the Software Preservation Network

Introduction to the Software Preservation Network, Academic Preservation Trust Member Meeting, Washington, D.C.

Presentations, Resources

Impact on the University as an Information Preservation Organization

“Software Preservation Network: Impact on the University as an Information Preservation Organization“, Archival Education and Research Institute, Pittsburgh, PN.

Presentations, Resources

Investigating Emulation as a Service for Reproducible Research at Yale

Presentation given at the 2020 Librarians Building Momentum for Reproducible Research virtual conference.    

Presentations, Resources

An Introduction to Emulation

Presentation at the NYU Institute for Fine Arts’ workshop “Digital Preservation: Caring for Digital Art Objects.”    

Presentations, Resources

Software Curation: Intersection of Policy and Practice

Panel presentation at Maintainers III in Washington, D.C. in October 2019 featuring perspectives on the materials that have to be maintained around the software in order to make the software meaningful including: research data curation librarian, service provider, legal expert, …Continue Software Curation: Intersection of Policy and Practice →

Presentations, Resources

Participatory Design for Long-term Access: User Research, Software Preservation, and Emulation

EaaSI presentation given at Open Repositories in Hamburg, Germany in June 2019

Presentations, Resources

Software Curation: An Ecosystem of Users, Tools, and Services

Panel presentation at PASIG in Mexico City, Mexico in February 2019 featuring perspectives from different niches in the software curation ecosystem including: software sustinability trainer, software preservation and emulation infrastructure providers, a disciplinary liasion, and a legal expert.

Presentations, Resources

Scaling Software Preservation & Emulation Services

EaaSI presentation at Digital Library Forum in Las Vegas, Nevada in October 2018.

Presentations, Resources

Participatory Design for Software Preservation and Emulation Services

EaaSI presentation given at International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES) in Boston, Massachusetts in September 2018

Presentations, Resources

Complex Data Sets, Software Preservation and Emulation: A distributed approach to long-term care

EaaSI presentation at Research Data Archiving & Preservation Summit in Chicago, Ilinois in March 2018

Presentations, Resources

Webinars

Reports

The Software Preservation Network working groups, affiliated projects, and governance committees produce reports that document the state of the field in different activity areas of software preservation. These reports are issued as authoritative snapshots and include recommendations for further analysis.

EaaSI Wikidata Report: January 2020

This report describes the current state of entity data in the Wikidata knowledge base for the domain of computing between January 2018 and January 2020.

Reports, Resources

EaaSI Wikidata Report: October 2019

This report describes the current state of entity data in the Wikidata knowledge base for the domain of computing between January 2018 and October 2019.

Reports, Resources

EaaSI Wikidata Report: July 2019

This report describes the current state of entity data in the Wikidata knowledge base for the domain of computing between January 2018 and July 2019.

Reports, Resources

EaaSI Wikidata Report: April 2019

This report describes the current state of entity data in the Wikidata knowledge base for the domain of computing between January 2018 and April 2019.

Reports, Resources

3D/VR in the Academic Library: Emerging Trends and Practices

3D/VR Preservation: Drawing on a Common Agenda for Collective Impact Digital curation is now part of the repertoire of all computationally dependent domains, requiring mechanisms for alignment to address common digital curation challenges that are beyond the scope of any …Continue 3D/VR in the Academic Library: Emerging Trends and Practices →

Reports, Resources

EaaSI Wikidata Report: January 2019

This report describes the current state of entity data in the Wikidata knowledge base for the domain of computing between January 2018 and January 2019.

Reports, Resources

EaaSI Wikidata Report: October 2018

This report describes the current state of entity data in the Wikidata knowledge base for the domain of computing between January 2018 and October 2018.

Reports, Resources

EaaSI Wikidata Report: July 2018

This report describes the current state of entity data in the Wikidata knowledge base for the domain of computing between January 2018 and July 2018.

Reports, Resources

EaaSI Wikidata Report: April 2018

This report describes the current state of entity data in the Wikidata knowledge base for the domain of computing January, 2018 to April, 2018.

Reports, Resources

Exploring Curation-ready Software: Use Cases

The Curation Ready Software working group endeavors to develop use-case driven guidelines for improving the quality of preserved software given available resources (“curation-readiness”), including expertise, technical infrastructure, and time.The Software Preservation Network’s Curation-ready Software working group endeavors to develop use-case  …Continue Exploring Curation-ready Software: Use Cases →

Reports, Resources

Exploring Curation-ready Software: Improving Curation-readiness

This report is a continuation of Exploring Curation-ready Software: Use Cases by Rios et al. (2017) The Software Preservation Network’s Curation-ready Software working group endeavors to develop use-case  driven guidelines for improving the quality of preserved software given available resources  …Continue Exploring Curation-ready Software: Improving Curation-readiness →

Reports, Resources

Templates

In every aspect of the Software Preservation Network’s activities, we strive to abstract away useful and generalizable processes that aid in localized reflection on which activities are possible and in what sequence.

In-Person Meeting Exercises

EaaSI Node Leads convened in November 2018 to review the EaaSI beta implementation process, discuss service design for emulation in local organizational contexts, prioritize project activities and review the Participation Agreement drafted in partnership with the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw …Continue In-Person Meeting Exercises →

Resources, Templates

Software Collections Inventory

EaaSI Software Collections Inventory is what is sometimes referred to as a Random (or spot) inventory. Random (or spot) inventories are extremely limited in scope. They are primarily used to verify the location of a representative sampling of objects. They …Continue Software Collections Inventory →

Resources, Templates

Scenarios for (Re)Use & Access

EaaSI Scenarios for Use & Access asks each Node Host to brainstorm scenarios for use and access they believe will drive the adoption of EaaSI; identify users whose use cases they believe may correspond with the scenarios for use and …Continue Scenarios for (Re)Use & Access →

Resources, Templates

Statement of Importance for Software Preservation

Each Node Host Team was asking to provide 250 words or so that addressed the following questions: Why is software preservation important? What are the advantages to community infrastructure or approaching software + preservation and emulation as a collective action problem? What …Continue Statement of Importance for Software Preservation →

Resources, Templates

Semi-Structured Interviews

EaaSI Scenarios for Use & Access asks each Node Host to brainstorm scenarios for use and access they believe will drive the adoption of EaaSI; identify users whose use cases they believe may correspond with the scenarios for use and …Continue Semi-Structured Interviews →

Resources, Templates

Scenarios for (Re)Use & Access

FCoP Scenarios for Use & Access asks each cohort member to articulate potential software (re)use and access scenarios; identify users whose use cases they believe may correspond with the scenarios for use and access that they articulated; and ask participants …Continue Scenarios for (Re)Use & Access →

Resources, Templates

In-Person Kickoff Exercises

FCoP Project Leads assembled at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA in August 2018. The 2-day In-Person Kick-Off Meeting was an opportunity for cohort members to examine their software preservation projects through the lens of metadata, existing digital curation …Continue In-Person Kickoff Exercises →

Resources, Templates

Soup to Nuts: Simulating Software

The purpose of the Soup to Nuts exercise is to revisit your Software & Collection Inventory and Scenarios for Use & Access to determine if those software cases/examples are still the cases/examples that you want to configure and test in …Continue Soup to Nuts: Simulating Software →

Resources, Templates

Prioritizing Software

This purpose of Prioritizing Software is to expose Node Hosts to National Software Reference Library software categories and their contribution to the EaaSI seed library; to provide an overview of the EaaSI software configuration workflow; and to connect the software …Continue Prioritizing Software →

Resources, Templates

Prioritizing Features

This purpose of Prioritizing Features is to encourage Node Hosts to articulate and prioritize possible features for each feature category of the EaaSI system including Search/Discovery Resource Import Environment Configuration Metadata/Description User Management User Interface Network Capabilities Data Management Access …Continue Prioritizing Features →

Resources, Templates

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

Software Metadata

The purpose of this activity is to think through software metadata in relation to your organizations’ programmatic software collection, curation, preservation and emulation activities. The goal is to determine what types of policy and workflow changes might be needed to …Continue Software Metadata →

Resources, Templates

Software Collections Inventory

The purpose of the software collections inventory is to begin to identify the range and scope of software passively or actively collected by your organization.

Resources, Templates

Six Month Software Curation Plan

The purpose of this session is to develop a clearer sense of the project-specific and cohort goals over the next six months.

Resources, Templates

Scenarios for Use & Access

The purpose of the Scenarios for Use and Access exercise is to articulate potential software (re)use and access scenarios, and to inform/verify your assumptions regarding (re)use and access scenarios by observing an end user.

Resources, Templates

Documenting Digital Curation

The goals of this activity is to begin to identify areas/phases/stakeholders that will be impacted by the introduction of programmatic software collection, curation, preservation and emulation activities. We will revisit the results of this activity in several months to compare …Continue Documenting Digital Curation →

Resources, Templates

Baseline Cost Measurement

This purpose of the baseline cost calculator is to capture as much granular information about the costs of software preservation in different organizational contexts as possible – inlcuding start-up costs. We understand that every organization will vary in terms of …Continue Baseline Cost Measurement →

Resources, Templates

Software Preservation Statement of Importance

The purpose of the Software Preservation Statement of Importance is to faciliate consensus building within an organization on the topic of software reservation and emulation. The goal of the Statement of Importance is to articulate clear understanding of softwar preservation …Continue Software Preservation Statement of Importance →

Resources, Templates

Inreach-Outreach

The first goal of this activity is to brainstorm and articulate 2-3 internal advocacy activities that each of you can take home to your organization in order to increase organizational readiness for and participation in software collection, curation, preservation and …Continue Inreach-Outreach →

Resources, Templates

Bibliography

“Software Preservation Bibliography” by Software Preservation Network’s Training & Education Working Group, January 14, 2020.

The Software Preservation Bibliography is a living, curated Zotero library of resources, tools, organizations, and research related to software preservation. Help us to expand this resource by adding a reference to the Bibliography.