Future-Proof Preservation of Complex Software Environments
Emulation evolves into a mature digital preservation strategy providing authentic access to a wide range of digital objects using their original creation environments. In contrast to migration, an emulation approach requires a number of additional components, namely the full software-stack required to render a digital object, and its configuration. Thus, independent of which emulator is chosen, contextual information of the original computer environment is always needed.
To overcome this knowledge gap, a formalization process is required to identify the actual building blocks for an authentic rendering environment of a given object. While the information gathering workflow relies heavily on user knowledge and manual interaction during ingest, the workflow is coupled with a feedback loop so that both a complete emulation environment and preservation of desired properties for later access are ensured.
["Rechert, Klaus", "von Suchodoletz, Dirk", "Valizada, Isgandar"]
["ischool", "toronto", "canada", "emulation", "digital preservation"]