Software often plays a key role in the ways that institutions function, and some institutions, like the National Library of Medicine (NLM), have a history of developing software to serve their unique needs. Preserving this in-house developed software is the goal of the National Digital Stewardship Residency Project, “NLM-Developed Software as Cultural Heritage.” This project will not only help ensure access to content created on this software, but, in the case of NLM, will also help document a long and often unrecognized intellectual history [1]. Although copyright concerns are largely avoided since the software was produced in-house, a variety of administrative obstacles still need to be addressed before the technical process of software preservation can begin. These obstacles include but are not limited to: (1) locating knowledge sources for software projects that are long defunct; (2) locating usable copies of software, either tangible or intangible, that may not have been properly documented or stored; and (3) tracing the history of projects that may have gone through several re-branding efforts or versioning’s. This poster will address these issues as they have affected the current project at NLM and will demonstrate how a properly conducted inventory is necessary for contending with these obstacles and ensuring a reliable long-term software preservation strategy.

digital preservation, digital curation, iPRES, Chapel Hill

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Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Digital Preservation

School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill