PresQT Workshop 1: Software Preservation Network by Zach Vowell
Channel: Natalie Meyers
Date: 2017-05-08

Zach Vowell, Cal Poly State University presents on The Software Preservation Network (SPN) at the PresQT Workshop May 1, 2017 at University of Notre Dame. 

The Software Preservation Network serves in a coordination and advocacy role, aligning efforts across the software preservation landscape. 

SPN membership reflects several distinct but overlapping communities of practice including law, public policy, social science, natural science, information & communication technology and cultural heritage preservation. Our work currently involves: legal licensing and information policy research; an international registry of software collections; and software development contributions to technical infrastructures that facilitate long-term access to software.

This lightning talk introduces SPN to the PresQT audience and discusses commonalities shared by the different software preservation use cases. Such cases include the cultural heritage collection scenario where historical collections contain software-dependent digital objects, and which will need ongoing access to software to maintain those objects’ intelligibility.

Another use case involves software-dependent research where scientific reproducibility is at stake. The differences between these use cases are undeniable, yet their shared challenges call for a collaborative solution.

The lightning talk will also serve as an invitation to participate in SPN’s efforts and likewise offer for SPN to contribute to any audience members' work in this area. SPN is actively seeking more local use cases in order to better articulate the need for software preservation to a variety of stakeholders.