Digital Preservation and Curation: The Danger of Overlooking Software

Software is often overlooked when considering the wider requirements for preserving digital outputs. A key challenge in digital preservation is being able to articulate, and ideally prove, the need for preservation. The Software Sustainability Institute in partnership with Curtis+Cartwright Consulting have published a series of outputs to support the sector by raising awareness of software sustainability and preservation issues. This chapter summarises some of the advice set out in the Software Preservation Benefits Framework that has been developed which can help groups understand and gauge the benefits or drawbacks of allocating effort to ensuring that preservation measures are built into processes and to promote actively preserving legacy software. This identifies four key purposes, and seven different approaches, to preserving software. In this way, important software can be preserved for future generations.