U of IL Library Project Archives Computer Games

Sometime this August, librarians at the University of Illinois will finish archiving over a dozen famous computer games, then step back to consider where to go next with their project. These programs go back over four decades, and include a 1993 version of Doom, various editions of Warcraft, and even MIT’s Spacewar! circa 1962.

Ars Technica – Saving “virtual worlds” from extinction.

Now this is the sort of digital preservation I could get into. It will interesting to see how they solve all the issues around hardware dependency that comes with these old games, “[W]hat we’re trying to do is preserve not only the games, but preserve the knowledge that you would need to create a virtualization platform to play the game.” Big job for librarians. Seems like figuring out how to keep copies of digital texts around should be a walk in the park after this.