Presentation by Dr. Megan Winget: ‘This is What Software Preservation Looks Like’

Join us for a special presentation by Megan Winget on Tuesday, May 22 at 1:30pm in Manning Hall 01.

This is What Software Preservation Looks Like: Need, Knowledge, Patience, Skill, Hard Work, and a Just a Touch of Obsession

In this teaching demonstration, Professor Winget will provide a brief overview of the current state of software preservation, including different theoretical approaches; the roles of metadata, systematic collection development, and community engagement. She’ll present a case study describing how a software development company in Austin revived a dead programming language to recover an algorithm that is central to their business model. This story involves: searching for, and finding, a “really crazy FTP site” that held a Soviet-era paper-tape reader emulator; hacking the program, written in Russian in the mid-1980s; and a really very charming video of a very excited guy running the command-line program proving they could emulate the lost code.  

Bio: Megan received her MSIS in 1999, and Doctorate from SILS in 2006. While at Carolina, Megan worked in the University Archives, the Southern Historical Collection, the Rare Book Room, and for Documenting the American South. She taught at the University of Texas at Austin from 2006 – 2013, where she specialized in digital preservation, specifically of new media artifacts like video games and new media art. She teaches classes in digital curation, digital preservation, and organizing information. Since 2013, Megan has worked as an independent consultant for industry, focusing on taxonomy development and leveraging big data to improve business systems.