Why we need to involve both the science and

cultural sectors?

Dutch Coalition on Digital Preservation

Since 2008 as a cross-domain national coalition covering the entire public sector

To establish an organisational and technical infrastructure for long‐term access to all digital objects which are of crucial importance for science, culture and society

Digital Heritage Network

NCDD - Building a Future for our Digital Memory

6

Scalable services Transparent costs Roles and Responsibilities

A.1 Distributed services

A.2 Persistent Identifiers

A.3 Software sustainability

B.1 Cost modelling C.1 collection development ‐ CS

C.2 Preservation policies

C.3 Certification

C.4 Expert network preservation

Sustainable Digital Heritage

C.5 Co‐ordinating Web Archiving

Teaching & Training

C.6 Collection development Decision tree

Survey Case Studies

Importance of software sustainability for Cultural Heritage

• In all domains collections and data are (born-)digital

• These data is produced through software and requires software to be read and

understood

• Growing number of digital objects are software-dependent

• Software needs to be kept and maintained as long as the data are relevant

• This has consequences for:

• Selection of digital objects to be preserved

• The accompanying software (and hardware)

• Maintenance of knowledge on software and the use of software

• Legal frameworks

• Preservation policies

Preservation strategies

1. Migration

2. Emulation

• Increase of volumes

• Rise of computational complexity

• Emulation tools become more feasible and scalable

• Emulation as a Service

• Emulation becomes attractive alternative

• Implications on standards and services and support

Emulation expected to become common practice

Shift in how heritage institutes approach preservation strategies

Common issues for all domains

1. Legal issues

• Copyrights

• Licensing legislation

• Legal deposit

• Copy-protection infringments

2. Availability of hardware

• Storage devices

• Computer systems

3. Bit‐rot

4. Standards and documentation

But also specific issues

Museum / art domain

Software is only part of the problem. Goal is to keep

artefacts alive in such a way that the observer gets the

impressions intended by the artist

Archival / Library domain

Software is needed to maintain access to the data.

Different formats, different versions, different software,

many commercial office software

Science

Emphasis mainly on reproducibility of scientific output

Software obsolescence

• Software obsolescence is a side effect of the ongoing innovation in ICT

industry

• Vendors respond to market needs

• It becomes economically unfeasible to maintain older versions

• But memory institutes need to preserve content far longer than the

life-span of software products and software vendors

Legacy and newly created

Make distinction between

1. Legacy software

• Software archives

• Computer museums

• Emulation practice

2. Newly created software

• Education

• Documentation

• Guidelines: software seal

UNESCO PERSIST Programme

Example: National Library

• Collects publications, also digital since early 90s

• Books accompanied by floppy disks, cd-roms, dvd’s

• KB has large CD-ROM collections

• Problems

• Having working cd-rom players

• Bit-rot and storage errors

• Copy-protection issues

• Solutions

• Emulation

• Migration to other carriers

Example: Archives

• State and municipal records

• Different systems

• Proprietary data

• Not easily to be reconstructed without original software

Example: Institute for architecture

• Collects important examples of Dutch architecture from 1850 onward

• Drawings, Marquette's, models, design process

• Now mainly born-digital: 3D models, Autocad

• Problem

• Different software products

• Different versions

• Layering and rendering

NCDD - Building a Future for our Digital Memory

Example: game preservation

• Gaming example of digital objects where the role of the

software is essential but only part of the game

• Device on which the game runs is also essential part of the

experience

• Compatibility is important, but especially the experience

• Software has no value without the device

• Interactive internet games make it even more complicated

• Companies grow very fast, but also disappear just as quickly

• Hardly any publicly available documentation

Example: Born digital art

• Art is about the perception of the viewer (at a certain point in time)

• Digital art is about the same, and about the creativity of the artist

reflected in software and code

• Digital art is instruction based. The art work depends on software,

hardware and OSs

• Preservation is object based and time consuming

• Preservation of digital art needs a lot of documentation

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUDxyXanmps

http://www.neogeocity.com http://sleepmode.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/sites/default/files/cover-3190-22037/after-dark/all/flying-toasters.html https://www.bryanbraun.com/after-dark-css/all/fish.html

Example: online

Example: DDS

General conclusions from the Use Cases

• The variety in the nature of software products in use in the public sector is

large

• There is no one-size-fits-all solution

• Legal issues are to be overcome before software from the past can be

lawfully used

• Software maintenance goes well beyond keeping a copy of the text

• Having software properly maintained does not guarantee its sound use

• Criteria for keeping or discarding software are lacking

Aspects of legacy software preservation

• Community coordination. How to set up a coordinated effort to collect and

preserve software essential to access our digital heritage?

• Legacy software licenses. How to approach legal issues related to

commercial and orphan legacy software?

• Economic sustainability. Can cultural heritage institutions make a business

case to rights holders for preserving software?

• Technology infrastructure. Implementation, management, and access to

legacy software services.

• Standards and best practices. Development of guidelines for cultural

heritage institutions that need to re-use software.

www.ncdd.nl

@info_ncdd

info@ncdd.nl

NCDD - Building a Future for our Digital Memory

Report on software sustainability and case studies

http://www.ncdd.nl/wp-

content/uploads/2016/11/201611_DE_Houdbaar_final_report_software-

sustainability_DEF.pdf

Just some questions… • How can we ensure sharing knowledge between

parties? • Can we conform that there is enough overlap in

the issues regarding software sustainability between the science domain and the cultural sector at large?

• Is emulation a real solution and within reach for heritage institutions?

• How to involve large market (commercial) parties, like Microsoft, IBM, …

• Could a Software Seal of Approval also help for the legacy issues facing heritage institutes?

NCDD - Building a Future for our Digital Memory