Software archives as a vital base for digital preservation strategies

Abstract

Software archives are vital parts in long-term preservation strategies of digital artifacts because almost every digital preservation strategy depends on additional software components. At this point a software archive becomes important. Such a repository should not only store ancient applications and special object dependencies like fonts or required helper tools, but also meta data like operation manuals, license keys and knowledge of operating ancient user environments. This article describes the challenges of establishing and managing software archives and presents a constructive approach which can be integrated in existing preservation frameworks. Furthermore, the suggested approach offers the possibility to interactively ingest software components into the archive and enrich it with sufficient meta data.