An Overview of Emulation as a Preservation Method

Eric Kaltman, Winnie Schwaid-Lindner, Drey Jonathan, Andrew Borman, Alex Garnett, and Larry Masinter

July 2025. 60 pp. (electronic only)
CLIR pub 194

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Cover for An Overview of Emulation as a Preservation Method. CLIR Publication 194.

An Overview of Emulation as a Preservation Method

Emulation–the use of modern computer systems to run historical software–is a growing practice within libraries, archives, museums, and galleries that is essential to conserving and providing ongoing access to the digital past. Emulation makes it possible to interact with historical data and digital artifacts in ways that are more consistent with their creators’ intentions, helping contemporary users better understand how and why those artifacts were made. Increasingly, academic and cultural organizations face challenging decisions about using emulation to preserve and provide access to their collections. An Overview of Emulation as a Preservation Method introduces fundamental concepts related to emulation in practice and explains key considerations that can inform these decisions. The report also includes a review of academic literature related to emulation and suggests new avenues for potential future collaboration and exploration. Together, the conceptual overview, example use cases, and literature review provide readers new to emulation with an orientation to the current state of practice as well as an understanding of the important role of emulation in the larger field of digital preservation.

The six authors of the report are members of the Software Preservation Network (SPN) Technological Infrastructure Working Group. Over several years, this group has been documenting and sharing insights about emulation workflows actively employed in academic and cultural settings. Their work aims to establish best practices and inform scalable infrastructure solutions that can be broadly shared so that legacy software can become more accessible and maintainable in the future.

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