The Yale University Library’s EaaSI (Emulation as a Service Infrastructure) program made its first contribution to AWA. The goal of the EaaSI program, led by the Digital Preservations Services team and funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is to make the ever-increasing collections of born-digital information accessible to users at Yale and beyond. Seth Anderson is the Software Preservation Program Manager at Yale University Library and Co-PI of the EaaSI program of work. He oversees the ongoing work to develop the EaaSI system and services, which support the application of emulation for access to born-digital information that relies on software for access. Yale University Library has stored a selection of preserved computer environments, created in the EaaSI system, for long-term storage. These environments were set up to contain software applications that could be used for access of digital special collections materials in the future. includes Microsoft Office and Adobe Suite. Other elements preserved is representative samples of Windows and Apple computing environments, statistical analysis software, and everyday office software—along with the necessary information to access those systems should future users need to extract the by-then-obsolete data from the vault. “It’s exciting to be included alongside … monumental projects related to the preservation of the world’s cultural heritage,” Seth Anderson said when he made the deposit.
