title: Preservation Metadata for Software - Describing Software in Archives.
creators: Eoin O'Donohoe Claudia Röck Jesse de Vos
abstract: <p>Software preservation is concerned with the long-term storage of and access to computer programs in order to keep software alive. As archival objects, software presents us with many challenges. The notion of software covers a huge variety of applications that have complex relationships with often specific hard- and software environments that are maybe considered quite standard at the time of release, but over time become obsolete. In order for archived software to remain accessible we need a lot of information about the original environments in which the software worked at the time of release so that it can be reconstructed, either by using original hard- and software or, more likely, by setting up an emulation of the original environment.&nbsp;This report addresses the challenges of how to capture information about the original environment in (preservation) metadata.&nbsp;</p>
keywords: Software preservation Preservation metadata Metadata PREMIS Software Archiving