1. Digital Heritage Preservation Confronting Technology Challenges
Patricia Galloway
School of Information
University of Texas at Austin

2. Introduction Digital heritage preservation
Digital heritage as cultural heritage
Worthy of having preserved (in addition to content):
Working context of creation
Working context of active use
Context of maintenance/preservation
Digital heritage technicians in archives
Maintaining past digital infrastructures

3. Archives and digital preservation
Archival truisms
Don’t keep it all
Don’t try to preserve all properties
BUT:
Media materiality
Critical code
Big Data

4. Preserving culture X 3 Rochefort, Centre Internationale de la Mer
A school for 18th-century shipbuilding
UBC Museum of Anthropology
A platform for preservation of Northwest Coast woodcarving
Goodwill Computer Museum
A venue for passing on computer (maintenance) skills

5. Principles for preserving cultural skills
Preservation of skill stack
Skills for creation
Skills for use/performance
Skills for maintenance/preservation
Framework for preservation practice
Active practice or documentation of practice
Recognition of significance
Recognition of qualification as culture!

6. UNESCO: Digital as intangible
1993 Memory of the World
2003 Four documents
Charter on preservation of digital heritage
Convention on safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage
Guidelines for preservation of digital heritage
Guidelines for the establishment of national Living Human Treasures systems

7. Technicians preserving the digital intangible
Technicians: what do they do?
Combine craft and professional skills
Maintain and preserve technical infrastructure
Broker between users of infrastructure and its creators/inventors
Technicians: why no cultural respect?
Invisibility of infrastructure
They aren’t called conservators!

8. Preserving digital materiality
Digital environments are unique
Though manufactured, unique in use
Though subject to formal specifications, complexly interact
Technical knowledge and skill can preserve:
Hardware
Software
Documentation

9. Digital heritage preservation
Present
Computer museums (CHM, LCM)
Computer-related archives (Babbage)
Archives with digital holdings
Retrocomputing museums and archives
Future
Technician-masters as informants, teachers, conservators