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Notes from Every Object An Orchestra

Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson

Last updated on 19 May 2026

Andy Jackson is a Digital Preservation Specialist at the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC)

 

ooao.jpegDuring the recent DPC Members event, Every Object An Orchestra: A Software Preservation & Emulation Showcase, the presenters and attendees worked together to capture some notes about the event and related information. While the recordings are only available for DPC Members and paid attendees, we hope these shared notes will help anyone interested in knowing what the Showcase showed and the discussions discussed!

Showcase Lightning Talks

  Using EAASI to Expand Access at Yale

Claire Fox - claire.fox@yale.edu, Ethan Gates - ethan.gates@yale.edu, Wendy Hagenmaier - wendy.hagenmaier@yale.edu (Yale Library, USA)

  • Only academic library unit dedicated to software preservation and emulation
  • Operationalizing access to and preservation of software and operating systems
  • Emulation-as-a-Service-Infrastructure = EaaSI -- software emulation platform that has some controlled access
  • Working on instruction with born-digital items in archives that rely on software for access
  • Number of requests for this is increasing but still relatively low compared to other parts of collection
  • Most pressing challenges in this work: social -- relationship-building, establishing trust
  • Feb 2025 - now, had 2 classes with different courses: Film & Media and Global Affairs
  • Film studies: interactive CD-ROM from 1995, simultaneous access to 25 students, worked with instructors to tailor lesson to the class
  • Global Affairs: early 2000s Word docs
  • Great way to see needs of the user community
  • Teaching use cases focused the development to work around known limitations, like sharing emulated environments across accounts and SSO authentication
  • Finding middle ground between user needs and engineering best practices (like avoiding simultaneous metadata authoring)
  • "Every Object an Orchestra...
    ...and every orchestra a community of people."

Questions

  • Q: Are the researchers/patrons coming to you and asking for EASSI by name, or are they coming to you with a problem and you are suggesting EASSI as a solution?
    • A: Definitely the latter
  • Q: Have you had problems presented to you that, on the surface should be solvable using EAASI, but in the end proved to be too intractable? What were they and what were the blockers?
    • A: I'm struggling to think of specifics because the issue tends to be less that the problem couldn't be solved with EAASI and more that the problem couldn't be solved in the time before the researcher/staff member/etc had to move on - because we had to first investigate the born-digital material closely to find the appropriate legacy software, track down a legitimate copy of that software (off eBay, etc), investigate that software in emulation, compare the material in a couple different computing environments to find the most-appropriate rendering, etc. But general lack of awareness or the possibility of accessing born-digital materials in EAASI or emulation is the bigger blocker. Coming up with instructions for the person to interact with the thing they requested takes time too (and can be opaque, even in the few requests we've received we often don't get detailed feedback about the experience they had).
    • A: Agreed — the only request I can think of that we could not fulfill was one that came via Interlibrary Loan. A student requested a CD-ROM from another institution, we couldn’t image it for emulation because we don’t own it, and the institution that did own it couldn’t provide access via EAASI/emulation because it was outside their service model.

Links

 Reviving Digital Artworks through VMs

Jeremy Heil - heilj@queensu.ca (Queen's University Archives, Canada)

  • Wicked Ideas - proof of concept in 2023 to revive a specific work (vancouversonglines.ca)
    • Very internal, specific to the project and artist
    • Used flash! Needed a flash emulator and specific browsers
  • Emulator Library for Media Arts (ELMA) -- develop infrastructure for preserving & interacting with computer-based artworks
    • Didn’t get to the emulation part but still in the virtualized part, so kinda more like “VLMA”
    • Outward facing, an expanded scope of what was done on Wicked IDeas
    • Another test case of a flash site, but this time the data was saved on a CD-ROM
      • In the flash viewer they had been previously using, they couldn’t get to the HTML part. Had to switch to another specific browser to access that part of the work
    • Second test case was a website with a database -- they still had access to the server. The work needed to be connected to a printer, laminator, and camera (it creates a card for someone)
    • Third case, also a website accessible on the server -- javascript flipbook and was recoverable in a virtual machine
    • These cases were presented at a gallery, on gallery computers not attached to the internet
    • Created lightweight VM servers and ran them locally, had to work through a few networking issues on the installation in the gallery
    • Since the use case was exhibition, that was the focus
    • Secondary purpose is support for artists creating this work to be able to revive their net artworks
    • Produce generic virtual machines for different technologies and extensive docs
  • Issues thinking about -- obsolescence of source files, media, and virtualized solutions, losing expertise, sustaining funding to maintain the work, and software licensing issues
    • Finding a license for Windows XP was especially difficult!

Questions

  • Q: Where does virtualisation end and emulation begin?
    • A: I would feel comfortable calling it emulation once we containerize the hardware dependencies along with the work (printer, etc.) ... but that's just my read on it!
  • Q: In the context of artworks, is there a point where the process of digitally preserving the artwork transforms it so much that it is no longer "the artwork" and hence should not be presented as such?
    • A: We were fortunate to be able to work directly with the artist, so her input was really key. She didn't mind creating versions of her work, so we were given free reign, but I was very aware of whatever changes I was making, and relied on journaling any changes I made (then communicating them). For artworks where we had no artist input, I would try to avoid changing anything, where possible.
    • A: Documentation was central to our entire project (informed in part by DOCAM - https://www.docam.ca/). We have hours of video with the artist, including walkthroughs and conversations. The topic of the ephemeral nature of works came up more than once - artist vision and intent really is important.

Links

 Minecraft Cambridge: Archiving a Pixelated Pandemic

Caylin Smith - cs2059@cam.ac.uk (University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives (CULA), UK) 

  • A Minecraft world acquired for CULA’s  COVID-19 collection https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/collecting-covid-19 
  • Within the broader picture of services for digital collection management, there has been a move to cloud-native services and storage to better accommodate all digital materials in scope for long-term preservation and access, including digital files of born-digital content deposited to archives that could be  atypical materials
  • Sent out a broad call for things related to COVID-19, like a really wide net, accepted mostly everything (not a WhatsApp group chat)
  • The approach taken to enable depositors to send digital files to the Covid-19 collection served as a case study for a new service–the Deposit Service–that allows depositors to securely deposit materials to CULA collections. 
  • Minecraft is a 3d open world video game, available on basically any gaming system, people can create shareable worlds, meant to be played with other people
  • Lots of use cases -- including learning languages and recreating historical sites
  • Minecraft Cambridge is a Minecraft world that was created by University students, staff, and alumni during the pandemic. 
    • Started off as a “Camfession” in hopes of more socialization during COVID-19
    • Used by over 1000 members of Uni community
  • The Minecraft world was deposited as it was on September 21, 2020 before that start of the Michaelmas term; this seemed like a good cut off point. 
    • Also: emails with the depositor, metadata about its creation + compatibility with Minecraft software
  • Very cute gameplay video where it’s of course raining 🙂
  • Over 1000 files in the playerdata folder, could be identifiable of individual players

 

  • Runs Minecraft Cambridge in Minecraft Java Edition at CULA
  • How do we want to represent this item in the collection? Gameplay videos?
  • A TON of effort involved -- first software work in the collections and first video game at that

Questions

  • Q: Can the server be opened up in a read-only mode that would allow visitors to experience it with other players?
    • A: Yes, it can be opened in read-only mode but the reader wouldn’t see any other players in the world.Getting this world running is very dependent on technology owned and provided by Microsoft. What I showed is a read only version. It can’t be added to if it were made available in a reading room, for example.
    • Audience answer: It's not uncommon for minecraft content creators to make world downloads available for others to load in their minecraft game clients to explore interactively - or load in onto their own servers.

Links

In-Browser Emulation: Telidon Computer Graphics

John Durno - jdurno@uvic.ca (University of Victoria Libraries, Canada)

  • 10+ year project on emulating Telidon graphics -- which was a project of the Canadian government to develop consumer-facing computer networks (failed overall but was used by Prodigy)
  • Telidon was notable because: interactive, run it networked or locally, great graphics for the time (vector!), but relied on specialized software + hardware
  • Why do this? It was used by Canadian artists and was some of the earliest telematic art in Canada. Thought to be lost due to technical obsolescence
  • Recover and convert tons of files -- needed to develop software to do this, as it was previously only viewable in period hardware
  • Needed to create the display using MVDI object library
  • Ran emulation in DOSBox because it was made for MS DOS (a big sigh of relief, to have something supported and maintained by other people)
  • Live demo of artist Nell Tenhaaf -- “US OR THEM” -- a political art piece made for Telidon
    • Omg access/viz of the Gallup Poll! And Soviet Peace Committee!
  • DOSBox can run on everything, so that is helpful for portability for this project, and also has controls for the emulated materials
  • Basically running a mini-computer in a browser, so you can drop out of the emulator to look directly at the files themselves!

Questions

  • Q: Can you edit the files when you drop out of the emulator or just look at them?
    • A: you could edit them if the editor was packaged in the emulator but just in the memory of the browser (not saved)

Links

 How are folks adding computational replay in institutional repositories?

Vicky Rampin - vicky.rampin@nyu.edu (Librarian for Research Data Management and Reproducibility, New York University Division of Libraries, New York, USA)

  • Idea: we should integrate existing research reproducibility tools into institutional repositories in order to encourage direct access and reuse of preserved materials
  • Evaluated different reproducibility tools and how they’ve currently been integrated into repositories (or should be)
  • 4 tools: BinderHub, JupyterHub, WholeTale, EaaSI

Criteria

BinderHub

JupyterHub

WholeTale

EaaSI

Open source license

✔

✔

✔

✔

Established governance practices

✔

✔

✔

✔

Import from repositories

✔

✔

✔

⦁

Export to repositories

✖

✔

✔

⦁

Export files to local computer

✔

✔

✔

✔

Institutional authentication

✖

✔

✔

✔

 

  • We should encourage two-way connections between repositories & reproducibility tools -- repositories could have a direct link on the record pages to these tools to encourage direct reuse of preserved materials as well as repro tools accepting links/file import from repositories
    • Helps patrons by pre-configuring computational dependencies and they don’t need to download/set up anything (unless they want to)
    • Familiar interfaces to many already (so fewer UI barriers to usage)
  • Dataverse currently has the most two-way interactions with reproducibility tools, and reworked their repository a bit to accommodate that, including adding in support for replication-package metadata, creating new APIs and endpoints for specific files and metadata, and creating new UI elements to encourage access

Links

The Research Software Sharing, Publication & Distribution Checklists project

Richard J. Acton - info@rsspdc.org (Data Outputs Manager for the Human Developmental Biology Initiative, Babraham Institute, UK)

  • Checklist to provide a structured aid for research software engineers who might want to share software for academic purposes, which is different from industry
  • Types of research software output:
    • Record of specific analysis or Research compendium
    • Web-base services
    • Generic tools:
      • Unitary tool / software package
      • Multi-part workflow / pipeline
    • Embedded: software that is custom stuff that runs on scientific instruments
  • 11 themes for people to consider, ranging from technical (source control) to social (code review) to legal (license)
  • Instituted a “medal” system -- 1 (bronze) to 4 (platinum) -- to encourage folks to do more than the bare minimum
  • Integrates into the way people write their code -- people can add a checklist file to their code repository and tick things off as they go (similar to adding a LICENSE or README.md file at the start of a project)

Questions

  • Q: Has it worked? Have you changed behaviours?
    • A: Anecdotal evidence - yes a few people have used this successfully who aren’t affiliated with him

Links

 Source Code Preservation at Vienna Museum of Science and Technology

Nika Maltar - nika.maltar@tmw.at (Vienna Museum of Science and Technology - Software Archive and Collection, Austria)

  • Code preservation at the Vienna Museum of Science and Technology -- how they use the Software Heritage framework and tools to do so (specifically the SWAHP workflow)
  • Software Heritage - nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving source code
  • Software Archive & Collection (SAC) group within Museum
  • Shares EaaS with Rhizome for emulating their collection
  • Collection is rapidly growing and they needed standardized workflow for this -- use case is VinylOS (alternative controller video game -- uses record player as a controller!)
  • Acquired the source code for this game
  • They treat source code as the blueprint for all objects
  • Created a dependency map for understanding the interaction between hardware, software, and source code
  • How can we capture the complete system information in a structured and standardized way?
    • Software Heritage Acquisition Process - SWHAP
  • SWHAP is a workflow that guides conservators through acquisition to curation, especially for legacy software
  • Process made sense for them because they use GitHub as an internal workbench and repository for source code collection -- but can be used independent of GH
  • Generated source code metadata via CodeMetadata generator
  • Gave the software a unique ID from the Software Heritage Archive -- SWHID generates a hash from the code itself (not the container level)
  • EUIPO (Out of Commerce Platform): 6 month legal process to clear the rights for creative software, the SWHID actually made the process easier and more transparent
  • All the steps can be carried out locally, the optional last step is contributing the software to the Software Heritage Archive (not necessary of course)
  • Join the software heritage foundation! Become an ambassador! Hang out at their events!

Questions

  • There is a long established precedent for legal deposit of "publications" ("What is a book?" - a discussion for another day). Can the definition of "publication" be extended to ensure the legal deposit of source code?
    • Audience answer: This may be quite jurisdictionally dependent - depends how the copyright statutes make provisions for out of use works / copying for the purposes of archival preservation. I think this came up in the recent EU parliament discussion in response to the stop killing games citizens initiative.

Links

Discussion

  • What inspired your interest in software preservation?
    • Vicky: in her opinion, the more you learn about research reproducibility, the more you come to the conclusion that you need software preservation to make that happen
    • Jeremey: needed flash viewer and the only place that he could find it was Internet Archive (Adobe was really trying to get rid of it) -- more boutique software requires more attention
    • John: research leave with university archives, documentary appeared on Motherboard on the Telidon artists who felt that their works were lost forever, and then thought “how hard could it be” LOL FAMOUS LAST WORDS. What’s likely to not survive? Corporate software which is locked away.
    • Nika: worked with Dragan! From the first lecture, fascinated by net art and did two internships with Rhizome. Came from traditional object conservation and this is a radically different type of field (gotta make your own standards)
  • Can you provide some examples of how to get organization buy-in to start supporting the software preservation route? Do you feel you have organizational buy-in?
    • Nika: yes! They created the position for software preservation and sees the necessity.
    • Wendy: a long history of advocacy for this work at Yale that has taken different shapes over the years -- but the work presented today *is* an advocacy strategy. Administrators are moved by seeing students use collections.
    • Jeremy: yes, Wendy! The lessons we learned can be applied to so many domains -- not just artwork. Conversations with government information librarian about emulating older information. Can show how it supports the entire mission, not a specific part of it!
    • Caylin: set up a pre-appraisal machine (PAM!) for different drives to help curators -- another advocacy mechanism is to ingratiate the service into all parts of library work
  • Given the amount of bespoke/highly-skilled effort behind these (inspiring!) case studies, and given the constricting of resources as of late (ex: painful funding cuts, copyright decisions, SPN composting), what tips do you have for advocating for emulation to leadership?
  • What technical skills or training would benefit doing this work?
    • Advocacy!
  • Maybe teaching researchers and artists how to help preserve things?
    • Partner with RDM + liaison librarians on this

Related Links

This is a place to add links to related resources or projects you think are interesting. Note that there’s a special section for related communities below.

 

Keeping In Touch

From The Room

All of the presenters have made their contact details available, and those are linked in above. The following attendees also made their contact details available, so feel free to get in touch with them if you want to follow up on this issue.

 

Related Communities

We also noted some other forums that people interested in software preservation might want to be aware of and consider joining.

 

 

There may be other useful links at https://www.digipres.org/communities/ and of course anyone interested in digital preservation is welcome on Mastodon at https://digipres.club.


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