JISC Beginner's Guide to Digital Preservation

The Software Preservation Study team are running a free workshop for digital curators and repository managers to understand and discuss the particular challenges of software preservation. It’s on Monday 7 February 2011 and will be held in London.

There is increasingly a need to preserve software: for example software is sometimes needed to unlock accompanying research data and make it (re)usable, or software is often a research output in its own right. The workshop’s premise is that curators and software developers will need to collaborate to preserve software: the curator needing the technical knowledge of the developer, and the developer needing the preservation expertise and mandate of the curator. This workshop is intended to be the first ‘bridging’ event between these two previously separate communities – so ground-breaking in its own small way.

Friendly technical expertise will be provided by the Software Sustainability Institute and the Science & Technologies Facilities Council (STFC). It’s a workshop for curation practitioners where real examples can be discussed and useful advice exchanged.

The team have created a briefing paper entitled Digital Preservation and Curation: The Danger of Overlooking Software which gives potential attendees a taster of what will be explored in more detail at the event.

Registration will open at 10:30am, with the workshop starting promptly at 11am on Monday 7 February at Brettenham House. Lunch will be provided. The team are aiming to finish the event at 3pm but will be holding a surgery-style session for additional queries, and walk-throughs of the methodologies until 4pm.

The workshop is free to attend but places are strictly limited. Further details and the full agenda will be provided to registrants.

For more details see the Software Preservation blog.