1. Software Preservation Network
NDSA Digital Preservation Conference
October 26th, 2017
Thank you to Charlotte, our moderator. Thank you to CLIR/DLF for creating this space for sharing and discussion - thank you to everyone for attending this session. We are very lucky to be in this session with Cynde Moya and Katherine Boss. Many thanks to Christa Williford from CLIR, Brandon Butler from UVA, Alex Chassanoff from MIT and Dan Noonan from OSU - My name is Jessica Meyerson, I work at Educopia Institute and together we are represent the Software Preservation Network.

2. Jessica Meyerson, Educopia Institute, jessica@educopia.org
Brandon Butler, University of
Dan Noonan, The Ohio State
Alex Chassanoff, MIT
Christa Williford,

3. Introduction to SPN Saving Software Together
Mission: Preserving software through community engagement, infrastructure support, and knowledge generation
Values:
Community
Sustainability
Access
Transparency
Advocacy
SPN was first discussed in a public forum in 2014 as an idea > an idea that was conceptualized as a logical extension of the work (spanning roughly 30+ years previously) that had come before, including the Preserving.exe Summit that was hosted the year before. SPN believes that software is important to preserve because it is information in and of itself and it is a dependency to access other digital objects. In 2016 thank to the generous support of IMLS, SPN was instantiated (based on a community roadmap developed at the Software Preservation Forum held in conjunctions with SAA in Atlanta) as the growing Network that it is today. Christa, Alex, Brandon and Dan will introduce and discuss activities and next steps in 4 key areas (legal, metadata, curation-readiness, and research) that all speak to the underlying purpose of SPN - to provide a community framework that facilitates broader participation in software preservation and creates a space for projects, programs, organizations and individuals involved in software preservation activities to be aware of/amplify/build on one another’s work.. And that community framework extends across use cases and across borders.

4. Legal/Policy Working Group
Scope: Explores licensing and information policy and develops a legal approach to software preservation and reuse
Recent work:
Partnership with Brandon Butler and Peter Jaszi for ARL Copyright Best Practices
Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic for continued research on case law and licensing for software preservation
The Legal/Policy Group has been working with Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic and other legal experts in the library world to conduct case law research, develop use cases, and engage in advocacy around copyright issues.

5. Legal/Policy Working Group
DMCA Triennial Rulemaking: Petitioning the Copyright Office/Librarian of Congress for an exception to the ban on hacking digital locks. Cyberlaw Clinic in lead role. Seeking stories!
Timeline:
9/13/17: Simple petition to break digital locks for software preservation submitted
October (??): Copyright Office issues Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, kicking off three rounds of comments - support, opposition, and reply
Winter-Spring 2018: Hearings and post-hearing questions
Spring-Summer 2018: Office issues recommendation, Librarian makes final rule.
One key activity of SPN in the legal/policy world is representing this community in the DMCA rulemaking process. Without an exemption from this process, it is unlawful to break technological protection measures (encryption, dongles, authentication servers, copy protection of any kind), even for lawful purposes. Fair use is no defense to the DMCA.

6. Legal/Policy Working Group
Fair Use Best Practices: Developing a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Software Preservation. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded, ARL as grantee, SPN as key informant and ally. Landing page:
Timeline:
August-Winter : Interviews and first report re current state of software preservation vis a vis copyright; where are the friction points?
Winter-Summer 2018: Focus group meetings to develop consensus practices.
Fall 2018: Publish Code and supporting materials.
Fall 2018-Spring 2019: Publicize and promote best practices.
One key activity of SPN in the legal/policy world is representing this community in the DMCA rulemaking process. Without an exemption from this process, it is unlawful to break technological protection measures (encryption, dongles, authentication servers, copy protection of any kind), even for lawful purposes. Fair use is no defense to the DMCA.

7. Legal/Policy Working Group
Join us for lunch! Bring your:
Stories about copyright and software preservation
Stories about cracking digital locks
Questions about how this stuff works
Cards and contact info
Calendar of events we should crash
Syllabus of must-reads about software preservation law/policy
Rolodex of other people we should talk to
One key activity of SPN in the legal/policy world is representing this community in the DMCA rulemaking process. Without an exemption from this process, it is unlawful to break technological protection measures (encryption, dongles, authentication servers, copy protection of any kind), even for lawful purposes. Fair use is no defense to the DMCA.

8. Metadata Standards & Policies Working Group
Scope: Develops and promotes common metadata frameworks to support software preservation and discovery
Recent work: Survey about metadata used in software preservation; crosswalk of software metadata ontologies
Members: Elizabeth Russey Roke, Glynn Edwards, Wendy Hagenmaier, Paula Jabloner, Eric Kaltman, Daniel Noonan, Katherine Thornton, Tim Walsh
The Metadata Standards and Policies Working Group is responsible for developing, promoting and advocating for common metadata frameworks and related metadata standards, vocabularies, and ontologies that support software preservation and access.
To that end, we developed a survey, earlier this year, to provide a baseline of metadata being used to describe and manage the preservation of and access to software, and to identify gaps in practices and standards.

9. MDWG Survey: Collection Development...
We are grateful to the 44 respondents, most of whom were from institutions in the United States, with just under 20% responding from the UK, EU, and New Zealand. It was interesting that only one respondent from outside the U.S. was from an academic institution; the others were predominantly from government agencies, such as national archives and libraries.
While 43% of the respondents indicated that they are willing to be further interviewed, Working Group members’ time has been the main constraint in pursuing this additional information.
Now for highlights of the results:
It appears that most institutions are lagging in addressing the acquisition of software in their collecting policies with over 84% of the respondents stating that they had no specific language in their collection development policies concerning software.
For those repositories that do not address software in their collecting policies, slightly over half had no plans to review their policies in the next few years. Of those who were planning to reevaluate their policies and include software, only a very small percentage had plans to do this in the upcoming year.

10. MDWG Survey: Donor Agreements...
Similarly, over 80% indicated that their accession or donor agreements do not address collecting software.
Of that nearly 20% of institutions that do, several actually specialize in acquisition of software.
For those that do not currently account for software in their donor agreements or accessioning documentation, there was an 50/50 split between those that are planning to update their agreements, and those that are not. A small percentage, just over 8%, said they were planning to tackle this within the next year; while about 42% indicated they would pursue this within the next few years.

11. MDWG Survey: Preserving Software?
Now for the money question.
When asked if their institution preserves software, just under 40% responded positively, while the majority indicated they WERE NOT preserving software.
Further, for those not preserving software, approximately half indicated they WOULD NOT even begin to preserve software in the foreseeable future.
A common sentiment, among those not preserving software, was best articulated by this response:
Quote “We do not believe it is our purpose nor do we have the funds or resources to manage software, especially outdated software that will continue to pose security risks (with no current updates).” Unquote
In nearly each case, it comes down to the resources - funding, staff time, and experience. Additionally, one repository noted that there is little administrative support for collecting and preserving software.

12. MDWG Survey: Preserving Software?
For those who are currently preserving software, their rationale varied from those who focused on software with enduring archival value to those that were preserving software platforms to render particular files.
More specifically:
one indicated that they were preserving it as an artifact
while four were preserving software solely to provide access to content
the other twelve, the vast majority, indicated it was for both purposes

13. MDWG Survey: Preserving Software? Yes
The next few slides pertain only to those institutions preserving software.
When asked, “What metadata is currently used in preservation?” they identified thirteen distinct metadata standards, with many institutions using multiple types.
And, when asked what controlled vocabularies they were using in the preservation of software, we begin to see one of the significant gaps: 42% replied “None.”

14. MDWG Survey: Preserving Software? Yes
Adding “fuel to the fire,” when asked what schemas or ontologies that they were utilizing, more than 50% indicated “None”.
And...and..when asked, “What file format registries are you using?” nearly half replied “None”, “n/a” or “?”.

15. MDWG Survey: Preserving Software? Yes
Finally when asked, “What systems do you use to preserve software?” the respondents listed a mix of more than twenty different preservation strategies, platforms and tools.
These responses did highlight where institutions were in the planning and process of preserving software, as well as provide insight on different preservation strategies.

16. MDWG Survey: Conclusions/Recommendations
Centralized registries for:
software collecting and preservation institutions (archival value and/or for rendering files)
software collection development policies
agreements, language specific to software access, and rights documentation
obsolete software accessible to those that wish to render files
Defining the limits to existing standards and tools—not all the fields are included in each standard—and developing a game plan for forward movement
Defining a minimal set of metadata for software preservation, as well as outlining optimal sets that are situationally delineated (e.g. emulation)
Documenting examples of existing metadata solutions for software preservation
Considerations for including metadata as machine-actionable to support emulation as a service and other applications
From the responses, as seen above, we are able to draw several general conclusions, and suggest many possible areas that need better documentation.
In general, most repositories seem to be in contemplation or an early planning phase, as indicated by the fact that over 80% do not address software in their collection development policies, nor any specific language in their donor or accessioning agreements. Furthermore, only a few repositories were planning to rectify this deficiency by updating their policies and agreements within the next year.
Interestingly, we also discovered that even the institutions that actively collect software, with policies and agreements in place, are still struggling with issues pertaining to metadata standards, best practice, and preservation workflows.

17. MDWG: The Crosswalk
The other project that our Working Group has been conducting concurrently to the survey--although it clearly begins to address a gap identified by the survey, “Defining a minimal set of metadata for software preservation”--is a crosswalk of metadata standards to identify their suitability for assisting in the preservation of and access to software.
The crosswalk includes:
63 Semantic units along with their definitions, and
20 schemas, accompanied by an explanation of purpose, and whether the schema is actively being maintained
We are examining each of the 20 schemas to determine if and how they include each of the semantic units, Additionally, we are tallying the number of occurrences of each semantic unit to see where there is the greatest commonality, which can assist in determining that minimum set of metadata standards. The current leader of the pack is Operating System, with 15 occurrences, followed closely by Version at 14 occurrences.
This is still a work in progress, which we intend to wrap up by year’s end. Stay tuned for more...
Thank you.

18. Curation-Readiness Working Group
Scope: Provides guidance, framed by use cases, for improving software’s “curation readiness”
OSF Working Group Page:
Members: Fernando Rios, Bridget Almas, Alex Chassanoff, Nicole Contaxis, Paula Jabloner, Heidi Kelly
The curation-ready software working group assembled in the Fall of Our charge was to provide guidance, framed by use cases, for improving software’s “curation readiness” - which we defined as improving the quality of preserved software given available resources including expertise, technical infrastructure, and time.

19. Curation-Readiness Working Group
Overview of Research Process
Iterative approach
Articulated perspectives of interest
Software as research process (academic/researcher)
Software as cultural heritage artifact (archives/museum)
Identified exemplar scenarios (e.g., reuse of software )
Outline steps for increasing curation-readiness for each case
Our approach to the research process was necessarily iterative - we wanted to look locally to understand possible representative cases of software to curate.
Our local settings included:a computer history museum, an archives/special collections unit within a research library, a data management services group within a university library, and an academic health library.
To scope our activities, we decided to explore two perspectives on software.
The first considered software as part of the research process - so examples across our institutions where software is created, maintained, or used to assist in the production of research.
The second perspective was concerned with software as a cultural artifact - curating software with historic, cultural, or artistic value
We identified exemplar scenarios of software-in-action at each of our institutions, and began to outline different kinds of activities for improving the curation-readiness of software.

20. Software Preservation Use Cases
Once we had articulated institutional use cases, we began to outline who the various stakeholders were that were involved with each use case.
For example, one of our use cases looked at software that was developed as part of funded research. It was intended to be made available and accessible for other researchers in a similar field of study.
However, there was a wider range of stakeholders that mattered in this case to adequately tell this software,’s story including: funders, other researchers, institutions, publishers, archives/repositories, and curator/data management specialists.
We also outlined possible goals for each use case - for example, a potential motivation for making software curation-ready for the use case above is to enable research transparency, reproducibility, and reuse, and to track research impact. Within each use case, its important to note that goals might be different according to the stakeholder. For example, archival repositories might attempt to keep preservation copies of software but not worry explicitly about enabling an environment to interact with that software. A researcher, on the other hand, might be concerned with whether the software is reproducible to verify or validate research results.
For each stakeholder, we also identified different responsibilities. So for the use case I described, funders, institutions and publishers are responsible for providing clear software sharing and preservation requirements. Similarly, archival repositories need to meet the preservation needs of funders, institutions, publishers, and researchers.
Finally we describe specific examples for each use case - for example, in the case we’ve described, an example of what that might look like would be purpose-built code which is used to support claims associated with a publication.

21. Curation-Readiness Working Group
Two reports
Exploring Curation-Ready Software: Use Cases April 2017
Making Software Curation-Ready July 2017
Call to Action
Where does software preservation fit into your institution’s overall preservation goals?
Join SPN Working Groups!
The group published two reports which are freely available on the Open Science Framework site - our hope is that they can provide guidance for institutions beginning to think about caretaking of software.
We also wanted to encourage the group to think about where software preservation fits in at your institution - for example - what kinds of valuable software do you have at your institution? Where is it located and what is being done to ensure its longevity? What kinds of curation strategies might be appropriate to explore at your institution and can you use these reports to suggest or guide thinking?
Although we are on indefinite hiatus, I wanted to encourage anyone who is curious to talk with me afterwards about our work or to consider joining many of the other active SPN working groups.

22. Research Working Group
Scope:
Facilitates research projects that bring individuals and organizations with diverse perspectives together to document and analyze the landscape of software preservation and access
Aims to explore frameworks for sustainable, transparent, community-based research and to advocate for innovative models of research that accelerates practice
Members: Yasmin AlNoamany, John Borghi, Alex Chassanoff, Wendy Hagenmaier, Eric Kalter, Monique Lassere, Cynde Moya, Megan Potterbusch, Katherine Thornton, Christa Williford, Lauren Work
The Research Group facilitates projects that bring individuals and organizations with diverse perspectives together to document and analyze the landscape of software preservation and access. We aim to develop frameworks for sustainable, transparent, community-based research and to advocate for innovative models of research that accelerates practice.

23. Ontology of Software Preservation Research Questions https://osf
Definitions
How can “software,” “software curation,” “software preservation,” and “software access” be defined, and how do the definitions matter?
Who and What
What institutions/organizations/communities/individuals are collecting, curating, preserving, and providing access to software, and what software are they collecting, curating, preserving, and making accessible?
What software registries exist, and what are they focusing on/asking for currently?
Why
What are the use cases for collecting, curating, preserving, and providing access to software, now and in the future?
Over the past year, Research group members have put together an ontology of research questions related to software preservation, along with citations for existing research that explores each question. The ontology is not meant to be a comprehensive listing of all research in the software preservation domain; rather, it’s intended to offer an entrance point into selected research and to empower community members to identify gaps where additional research could be done.
The ontology clusters research questions into several large categories, including definitions (papers that explore the boundaries of software preservation concepts and terms), who and what (environmental scans of current resources and practices), why (exploring benefits of and use cases for software preservation)...

24. Ontology of Software Preservation Research Questions https://osf
How
What workflows are currently being used to collect, preserve, curate, and provide access to software and what might future state workflows look like?
What skillsets are needed to collect, preserve, curate, and provide access to software?
What policies currently exist around preserving, curating, and providing access to software and what might future state policies look like?
What metadata schemas/vocabularies currently exist for describing software, and what are the gaps in the software metadata landscape?
How can the quality of software preservation be assessed?
What ethical questions exist regarding software preservation and curation?
...and how (establishing and promulgating best practices and policies). We identified several gaps in the existing research landscape, where additional research would be very beneficial to the community.

25. Next Step--Developing A Research Toolkit
A set of templates and research instruments that individuals can use to gather data about software preservation in their local organization or community
Individuals will be encouraged to contribute their data back to SPN
The Working Group will analyze the data in aggregate and map the landscape of software preservation over time
@cwillifo
With these gaps in mind, the Working Group is now turning its attention to amplifying and facilitating research in the community. We’re currently collecting research instruments (surveys and interview protocols) used in past formal and informal research projects related to software preservation. These range from lists of questions practitioners are posing to researchers in their organizations who develop and use research software in order to assess the need for software preservation services, to nationwide surveys of data and software librarians about the kinds of software they collect and what they do to preserve and provide access to that software. We plan to collect and share these instruments, and then use them to create general-purpose templates that individuals can adapt to gather data about software preservation in their local organizations or communities. The individuals will be encouraged to contribute their data back to the SPN Research Working Group, who will make the data available in aggregate so that community members can use it to map the landscape of software preservation over time. Ongoing work will be posted to the group’s OSF page linked here. If you have research instruments related to software preservation that you’ve been using, or if you’d like to join the group to contribute to the growing collection of citations in the ontology, we’d love to hear from you. Group members don’t need to make a long-term commitment to make meaningful contributions. The link to our OSF site and my contact information are here. Do get in touch if you’re interested.

26. Join Us! Web: softwarepreservationnetwork.org
Gmail:
OSF:
Google Docs (linked to OSF):
These slides: