Consider the Source: The V alue of Source Code to Digital Preservation Strategies

One of the major challenges in the digital preservation field is the difficulty of ensuring long-term access to digital objects, especially in cases when the software that was used to create an object is no longer current. Software source code has a human-readable, documentary structure that makes it an overlooked aspect of digital preservation strategies, in addition to a valuable component for the records of modern computing history. The author surveys several approaches to software preservation and finds that, by supporting open source initiatives, digital libraries can improve their ability to preserve access to their collections for future generations.

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