Archives, Libraries, Museums in Digital World 2010 Prag 2.12.2010

Dr. Winfried Bergmeyer

The Computerspielemuseum

Founded in 1997

Our Collections include:

• Computergames, educational software, media artworks

• Hardware (computer, video game consoles and peripherie)

• Publications (books and magazines)

• Videos

• Various documents concerning production, promotion and selling of computergames

The Computerspielemuseum

Activities:

• Over 30 special exhibitions

• Participation in national and international research projects

• Support of research projects by offering access to games and documents

• Comprehensive cataloguing project and a long term preservation project

KEEP (Keeping Emulation Environments Portable)

EU co-funded project 2009 - 2012

Goals:

• Emulation strategy for long term access of digital applications and documents

• Automatisation of emulation environments

• Portability of emulators by providing a virtual machine for existing emulators

• Making emulation strategy reliable and easy to use

Bibliothèque nationale de France (F)

Koninklijke Bibliotheek (NL)

University of Portsmouth (UK)

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (D)

Joguin SAS (F)

Cross Czech a.s. (CZ)

Tessella (UK)

European Games Developer Federation (S)

Computerspiele Museum (D)

The KEEP Consortium

Why emulation for long term preservation?

1. The genuine hardware will not be available in the future, so operating systems for execution of applications and/or applications for rendering digital objects will not be available any more

2. Emulation means to preserve and access the original bitstream

3. Migration of digital data in current file formats is not possible for complex applications.Only emulation will be a way to run these applications and to get access to the digital objects

Emulation for long term preservation

The three major tasks of KEEP:

• Develop a Transfer Tool Framework (TTF) for preservation of all kinds of data carriers

• Develop a „virtual machine“ (VM) for emulators

• Develop an Emulation Framework (EF) for access of digital objects

KEEP projectives

• Building a framework for the transfer workflow

• Specifying the Image file formats, supported by the emulators

• Batch processing for automatisation of multiple transfer processes

• Verification of the transfer results

• Automatic generation of technical metadata (for the EF)

Transfer Tool Framework

Transfer Tool Framework

TTF

Image File(iso, d64, g64 …)

Techn. Metadata

• Today (most) emulators have to be adapted to new hardware and operating systems

• This does not grand a sustainable use of emulation on the long run

• The „virtual machine“ offers a platform, on which emulators could operate and only the „virtual machine“ has to be adapted to new hardware and operating systems in the future

Virtual machine

Hardware-Platform

Operating System

Application

Digital Object Wordstar Document

Wordstar Wordprocessor

CP/M

Amstrad CPC 6128

Virtual machine

Hardware-Plattform

Operating system

Applikation

Digital Object

Intel Quad Core 64-bit

i.e.WinAPE

X

Emulator

Virtual machine

Windows 7

Hardware-Platform/OS 1

Application

Digital Object

EmulatorKEEP Virtual Machine

Virtual machine

Hardware-Platform/OS 2Hardware-Platform/OS 3Hardware-Platform/OS 4Hardware-Platform/OS 5

• Provision of required emulators, operating systems and applications for rendering digital objects in the original environment

• Offering the end-user an easy to handle emulation framework

• Offering different „emulation pathways“ (emulators)

• Offering different options for the emulation (display, sound, controllers …)

• Offering options for saving screenshots, video and audio sequences

Emulation Framework

Emulation Framework

• The Transfer Tool Framework will ease the production of images for different media carriers

• The „virtual machine“ will ensure the use of emulators in the future and makes emulation a sustainable way for long term preservation

• The Emulation Framework enables libraries, archives and museums to use emulation for delivering digital objects to the end-user

Conclusion

Thank you for your attention!

More Information:www.keep-project.eu

Dr. Winfried Bergmeyer

ComputerspielemuseumKarl-Marx-Alle 93 a10243 Berlin

www.computerspielemuseum.de bergmeyer@computerspielemuseum.de