The Long Now Foundation – fostering long term thinking
http://longnow.org/
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Matt
Environment Yukon | 867-667-8133 | Mon-Thu, 8:30-4:30
From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edward Sullivan
Sent: January 25, 2019 9:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: software preservation survey
The Time Machine, filmed by George Pal 60 years ago. Morlocks, nuclear war, and catastrophic lava flows; none had the impact on one little 9 year-old as this simple scene in a library:
https://youtu.be/GbTz7EZFs7s
Some decades ago, I worked at one information center which must remain nameless, where it took a herculean effort to dissuade a proposed conversion of old paper files to....
... scanned images stored on VHS cassettes.
Edward Sullivan
Economic & Planning Systems
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
-------- Original message --------
From: Virginia R Hetrick PhD
Date:01/25/2019 09:20 (GMT-08:00)
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: software preservation survey
Good morning, folks --
I just finished reading about this survey and would like to tell why I'm making the request at the end of this email so that you'll consider providing the information requested in this survey.
I finally got a new computer after the one I bought on New Year's Eve of 2006 developed a blip that even the fixit dude I know can't fix. This has resulted in my potentially losing access to all of the tools I've developed in the past 12 years as well as one I developed in 1984. This was NOT good. It's taken me since mid-July to find enough tools in the wonderous world of Windows 10 to cause my computational life to be even close to where it was before I got the new (and probably last personally owned) computer. Fortunately, several long-standing vendors haven't given up the ghost yet.
My point is that, if I were still in a non-volunteer job, I'd be out begging and screaming for people to do the survey so that the information gets gathered and saved for future researchers. That one of my volunteer jobs is in a library that includes a number of maps (including historical map sets) has reinforced my thinking about historical resources.
One of the first things I personally did at the behest of a friend who I first met during the summer of 1977 when I was a fellow at NASA-Ames was to save all my emails in a form and with software capable of reading my monthly archives. I can't tell you how many times being able to resusitate items from this archival system has saved my bacon! Approximately 375 CDs later, I saved December, 2018, over MLK weekend.
Early on, I got in the habit of saving both the raw .TXT files and .PDFs of lectures into the same archive. When I started getting electronic copies of books, I saved them separately but in the same systems. I also have a few of my most often used physical books that I use regularly, especially for computer and foreign language reference (think of a badly battered LaRousse from 1978 and a pair Danish language dictionaries from 1979-80, Rexx, Kedit, and FORTRAN books from the mid-1980s, and two Java texts from about 2001, plus both of Feinman's US geomorphology texts and Arthur Robinson's cartography text, and a seriously battered G-schedule from my time at LC in the early 1960s.).
Now to my request to the list: Please think about your archives of software as well as the data that software allows you to access. Think about how often you physically pull a book or other resource off a shelf or out of a drawer to answer a patron's question (or a question from the list). You probably don't have the "books" containing the equivalent information when you think about electronic data and software.
What will your successors in your library do without the equivalent resources? More importantly, what will the library's patrons do without the resources to do their work?
So, PLEASE answer the survey (Jessica's email about the survey appears below the line of equal signs) and think about the same questions as you go about your daily business!
And, thanks to Jessica's gang for putting the survey together!
Thank you for answering the committee's survey!
🙋 virginia hetrick
=====================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2019 13:19:52 -0500
From: Jessica Benner <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Subject: Understanding the Landscape of Software Preservation Services
Are you or is anyone you know preserving GIS or other software?
The Software Preservation Network’s Research Working Group invites you to participate in a survey on practices, needs, and gaps related to software preservation. The goal of the Software Preservation Network (SPN) is to “make it easier to deposit, discover and reuse software”. Learn more about SPN here: https://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/about/<https://imsva91-ctp.trendmicro.com:443/wis/clicktime/v1/query?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.softwarepreservationnetwork.org%2fabout%2f&umid=990E6179-804C-DB05-9F6F-075A23AABA7F&auth=c132af8ee7c9d1278d61a701569070a095ce962e-f8a0c4028dc6076c6695767b2941e39d77c1a2c9>.
Why Does This Matter?
For decades, researchers and practitioners in information science, digital preservation, and allied fields have discussed the necessity of software preservation: preserving software is a prerequisite for preserving and providing access to digital cultural heritage and research, and software is increasingly considered a research product or artifact in itself.
How are cultural heritage professionals working on preserving software? What are the obstacles to software preservation? Do best practices exist?
To help answer these important questions, we need your input. This survey is the first in what we hope will be a longitudinal study of software preservation services over time.
Who Should Participate?
Any individual or organization involved in activities that involve or rely on software preservation is encouraged to take the survey. For the purposes of this survey, software preservation encompasses a wide range of experimental or established services or actions at organizations such as collecting original software media and documentations, consultations with software producers or users of specialized or obsolete software, preservation of software code or executable files, metadata creation for preserved software, etc.
The survey will close on February 19, 2019.
How will the survey information be used?
Anonymized data from the study will be made available to the profession, along with analysis of current trends and possibilities for future research. This study has been approved by the Georgia Institute of Technology Institutional Review Board.
Take the survey (roughly 15 minutes): https://b.gatech.edu/2Cs10Gf
Questions? Contact: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Thank you in advance for contributing your insights!
The Software Preservation Network Research Working Group
Jessica Benner, Carnegie Mellon University
Wendy Hagenmaier, Georgia Institute of Technology
Monique Lassere, University of Arizona
Christa Williford, Council on Library and Information Resources
Lauren Work, University of Virginia
Jessica G. Benner | Library Liaison, Computer Science & GIS | Carnegie Mellon University Libraries | 4406 Sorrells Library | 412-268-2426
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