[game_preservation] Library of Congress funds project for game preservation

[Jerome McDonough]

I guess I should delurk  here and let people know that yes, there is  
someone from Illinois on the list.
My name's Jerome McDonough; I'm a professor at the UIUC Graduate  
School of Library & Information
Science and I'll be serving as the PI for the Preserving Virtual  
Worlds project.

We're extremely excited about this project at Illinois, since it  
allows us to start trying to tackle
some of the thornier problems in the digital preservation realm,  
including preserving executable content,
preserving digital content that relies on highly-specialized  
hardware, and trying to determine how best
to identify and preserve the 'contextualizing' information necessary  
to understand a game and its
use/role that isn't actually part of the game itself.  I can  
understand why people might not be
particularly worried about preserving Second Life  at this point, but  
obviously Second Life presents
preservation challenges, both technical and social, that a game like  
Space Wars does not.

Because there are a fair number of nasty and intractable issues  
involved in preserving games
and electronic literature (the other non-game side of the project),  
we are trying to focus on some
realistic goals within the project's time frame, including  
identifying the full range of information we
feel will be needed for long-term preservation and management of  
games and electronic literature,
investigating the feasibility/costs of obtaining some of that  
information (many digital preservation
projects have had problems with the costs of obtaining intellectual  
property permissions needed
to preserve content, even in cases where the IP holder  was willing  
to provide a license for free),
and experimenting with trying to actually ingest some of the more  
important games and electronic
literature into preservation repositories at some of our universities.

On the UK side, it might be worth a quick note to Adam Farquhar at  
the British Library about longer-term
plans for the PLANETS project.  I know they are very much focusing on  
handling more traditional library
content at the moment, but the BL team is a smart bunch and I suspect  
they are already worried
about executable content and what its preservation might mean for them.

On Aug 6, 2007, at 12:46 PM, Andrew Armstrong wrote:


> Hey Henry,

>

> Is there anyone from the Illinois, Maryland and Rochester  

> Universities on this preservation mailing list? It would be  

> interesting to get their thoughts and plans for the project, since  

> it only gives basics on the statement (although useful basics :) ).  

> Actually, Linden Labs are mentioned too (so are any of them here?),  

> but not exactly what Second Life is going to be involved in, so  

> that'd be worth knowing. Its not exactly an old, unavailable game,  

> so I was slightly surprised (not in a bad way) seeing it mentioned.

>

> Getting your views too on the project would be great, since this  

> seems like a brilliant project.

>

> Shame I don't know of any initiatives like this in the UK, I will  

> have to research it and see what parallels there are over here.

>

> Andrew

>

> Henry Lowood wrote:

>> All,

>>

>> just back form a short trip (Blizzcon), I find that Library of  

>> Congress has sent out the official news release announcing the  

>> Preserving Creative America Program here:

>>

>> http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-156.html

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Jerome McDonough, Asst. Professor
Graduate School of Library & Information Science
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
501 E. Daniel Street, Room 202
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 244-5916
jmcdonou at uiuc.edu