Call for members: SPN Research-in-Practice Working Group

[Fox, Claire]

Hi SPN community!

The Software Preservation Network (SPN) Coordinating Committee is seeking volunteers to lead and serve on a reimagined Research-in-Practice Working Group for 2025. To express interest, please email spn-re...@googlegroups.com by Tuesday, May 6 — more info below!

Direct experience in software preservation is not a requirement for volunteering; newcomers to the field are welcome and encouraged to apply. We are seeking two co-coordinators and 3-4 members to embark on the following exciting objective, which was identified by the SPN community as a priority for 2024 and named in SPN’s 2024-2026 goals. 

Objective: Initiate a resource for the SPN website by the end of 2025 to index which organizations are collecting which software titles and types. This data would be used to develop a strategy for collaborative software collection development that empowers documentation of the diversity of software creators and users.

Expectation of co-coordinators (~6-8 hours per month):

• Work with working group members, including project lead Cynde Moya, to achieve our objective stated above.

• The co-coordinators would collaborate to schedule and facilitate regular meetings of the working group (biweekly or monthly as needed and decided by the group). 

• They would be accountable for making monthly working group meetings effective by coordinating the agenda, engaging members before and after the meeting, and ensuring action items are understood and accounted for. 

• With the help of SPN staff, they would report and communicate their group's work within and beyond SPN, and build up future leadership within their working group.

• Each co-coordinator would participate in monthly SPN Working Group coordinator meetings with other Working Group coordinators.

Expectation of working group members (~4 hours per month):

• Actively contribute to the objectives above.

• Attend regular meetings of the working group (biweekly or monthly as decided by the group).

To express interest, please email spn-re...@googlegroups.com by Tuesday, May 6, with the following information:

• Your name, email, and institutional affiliation

• Whether you would prefer to serve as a co-coordinator (and for which objective) or group member

• What strengths and interests would you hope to bring to the group’s objectives

• You are also welcome to join our next working group meeting, which is on Tuesday, April 22 at 4pm ET in the U.S. (Wednesday, April 23 at 6am AEST for our members in Melbourne). Please email clair...@yale.edu for the Zoom link if you are interested.

Note: The Research in Practice WG previously prioritized the following objective: Contribute software preservation definitions and use-case-driven good practice recommendations to a software curation guidebook. This objective will likely be conducted as a collaboration between SPN and Software Heritage, in the form of synchronous and/or asynchronous writing “sprints.” This objective has been de-prioritized at this time. However, if you are interested in working on this type of objective, please do reach out and we can consider re-assessing the timeline for this work.

All best,

Claire Fox

Wendy Hagenmaier

Dan Johnson

Cynde Moya

Claire Fox (she/her/hers)

Software Preservation and Emulation Librarian

Preservation and Conservation Services

Yale Library

(working remotely, 10a-6p ET)

[Fox, Claire]

Hello again!

Please email clair...@yale.edu if you are interested in joining the SPN Research-in-Practice Working Group — not the email listed in my previous email, apologies! We look forward to hearing from you.

All best,

Claire

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From: Fox, Claire <clair...@yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2025 5:34 PM
To: spn-m...@googlegroups.com <spn-m...@googlegroups.com>; software-prese...@googlegroups.com <software-prese...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: spn-research <spn-re...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Call for members: SPN Research-in-Practice Working Group