Emulation: Bridging the Past to the Future without Altering the Object

Abstract

Emulation is a strategy getting more noticed in the long-term digital archiving community. It can complement the up to now dominant migration and has significant advantages regarding dynamic digital objects. Nevertheless a range of success conditions are to be met for a successful reproduction of objects in the future. The formalization of it using View-Path (pathways) to identify necessary metadata and additional software components may propose extensions of the OAIS reference model. This presentation provides insights on workflow instructions for the emulation preservation strategy. The View-Path model requires extensions of the metadata set of the primary object of interest and depends on additionally stored secondary objects for digital ecosystem reproduction like applications or operating systems. This presentation also addresses strategies on reference environments and giving an outlook on means for running emulation processes on distance improving user convenience while maximizing emulation capabilities.