The Software Preservation Network (SPN) 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 would introduce SPN to the PresQT audience and discuss commonalities
shared by the different software preservation use cases. Such cases would 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 an
offer for SPN to contribute to any audience member’s 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.