<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Jul 28, 2009, at 11:29 AM, Andrew Armstrong wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Rachel "Sheepy" Donahue wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">Because what good is having a backup copy of a game, if you can't play it?<br></blockquote>I don't think we're even near this stage yet. All the archives do have some form of working consoles, but not nearly everything is covered :) Maybe emulation stuff is more important if this is the main question, hehe.<br><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div>It depends on the game, the instantiations of the game available (i.e., source code vs. binary executable), and the resources available to enable long-term access. For the Preserving Virtual Worlds project, our working assumption is that long-term preservation is probably not realistic unless you have preserved both the game *and* either A. sufficient information necessary to port the game forward to new platforms or B. emulations which support running the game as is (and emulations which you can port forward). Since we're actually planning on trying to archive some content for the project, I think we're nearer to this stage than you might suspect. I'm in agreement with the Brewster Kahle-ian philosophy of 'grab the stuff now before it goes away forever and we can sort it out tomorrow' but what we grab has to be more inclusive than just the games themselves. Without additional documentation of how they work and how people use them, there's not much point. Fortunately, the gaming community has proved itself again and again to be remarkably agile in grabbing documentation on how things work and how people use them.</div><div><br></div><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Jerome McDonough, Asst. Professor</div><div>Graduate School of Library & Information Science</div><div>University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign</div><div>501 E. Daniel Street, Room 202</div><div>Champaign, IL 61820</div><div>(217) 244-5916</div><div><a href="mailto:jmcdonou@uiuc.edu">jmcdonou@uiuc.edu</a></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>