Corporate Archives in Silicon Valley: Building and Surviving Amid Constant Change

An historical understanding of the phenomenon that is Silicon Valley requires the collection and preservation of original records. With the rapid pace of change in the technology industry, how can archivists and their institutions preserve this corporate history? Two archivists address how they were able to found an archives at Cisco Systems and maintain another at Hewlett-Packard. Two common elements emerged: 1) the formation of a licensed limited company (LLC) as the legal structure for the archival repository, and 2) the use of outsourcing to staff both repositories. Outsourcing via a non-profit, in this case the Computer History Museum, or a for-profit archival service provider offers archival and exhibit expertise, scalability, and flexibility, all of which are instrumental for technology companies. With Silicon Valley’s headlong rush toward the future and its extensive use of contractors we believe these case studies will provide a partial mechanism for preserving Silicon Valley history

A Digital Repository Year: One Museum’s Quest for the Basics: Poster - iPRES 2012 - Digital Curation Institute, iSchool, Toronto

The Computer History Museum (CHM) had its own mini deluge of digital data. Our in-house produced high definition oral histories, lectures and exhibition videos were usurping our available server space at over 60 terabytes, with another 10 terabytes of historic digital artifacts including images and software. With the aid of grant funds from Google.org, CHM took on the work of creating a prototype digital repository in one year. The digital repository working group is excited about the possibilities the new repository represents for expanding our digital collection while putting the Museum in the forefront of small cultural institutions creating digital repositories and we hope to share what we have learned with other similar organizations

Report 1: Exploring Curation-ready Software: Use Cases

This is the first progress report of the Software Preservation Network Curation-ready Software Working Group. Also available here http://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/exploring-curation-ready-software-use-cases