Dear Colleagues, 

The EaaSI team is pleased to kick off our EaaSI Case Study series with  “The Would-Be Gentleman.” 

The EaaSI Case Study series consists of deep dives into emulation environments, highlighting specific use cases. Every six months a new case study is published on the Software Preservation Network website and features the following information about a specific emulation environment:

• About the group or unit that selected and worked on the emulation case study

• Any emulation challenges the team was expecting

• The audience for the emulation environment

• The tool chain used to create the environment

• The process of creating and testing the emulation case study,

• Reflections on overcoming emulation roadblocks, and

• How/where to access the emulation online 

Created in 1985 by Stanford history professor, Carolyn Lougee, “The Would-Be Gentleman” is a floppy disk simulation in which players (students) must manage the economic and social life of a French bourgeois during the life and reign of Louis XIV of France. Dr. Lougee created the simulation to supplement her history seminar entitled “The France of Louis XIV.” 

Josh Schneider, Stanford University Archivist, selected “The Would-Be Gentleman,” as an illustrative example from a University Archives collection featuring a range of academic software developed by Stanford faculty members over the years. Stanford Digital Archivist, Annie Schweikert, worked with EaaSI Software Preservation Analyst, Ethan Gates, to identify the necessary pieces for testing. 

Warm thanks to Stanford University Archives and Stanford Libraries Born-Digital Preservation Lab (BDPL) for bringing this case study to life!

READ the full case study here: http://bit.ly/eaasi-casestudy-1 

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STAY INFORMED

To receive bi-monthly EaaSI updates via newsletter and share your software preservation successes/challenges, sign up for the Software Preservation Network mailing list by visiting https://groups.google.com/d/forum/software-preservation-network. 

If you have questions for the project team, please contact Jessica Meyerson, at <jessica[at]educopia[dot]org>.

MORE ABOUT EAASI

The EaaSI program builds on previous work to apply the Emulation-as-a-Service (EaaS) framework for access and use of preserved software and digital objects. EaaSI aims to scale the technological framework necessary for multiple institutions to configure, share, and access software and configured environments. This directly complements existing efforts by the Software Preservation Network and others to address key aspects of software preservation including legal advocacy, research about local software preservation needs, institutional capacity building for software preservation, collection development, professional development and training, and workflow recommendations.