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STACKTRACE // News from Software Preservation Network
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Jun - July 2020
Volume 3, Issue 4
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Learn about current SPN-wide efforts—activities that crosscut working groups and affiliated projects.
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Saving Software, Together: Software Preservation Network (SPN) Welcomes New Members for 2021 and Beyond
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After a successful two-year seed funded period, the Software Preservation Network is now welcoming new members for the year 2021 and beyond. By investing $5,000 per year, your organization will join a vibrant community of practice committed to ensuring long-term access to software through community engagement, infrastructure support, and knowledge generation.
Since 2016, SPN has united colleagues from design firms, history of computing museums, research data repositories, university libraries, art museums, and the open source software community around critical questions and collaborative solutions to software preservation challenges. In January 2019, SPN launched a two-year seed funded effort to secure SPN as a sustainable, community-owned organization. Over the last two years, SPN has successfully cultivated a healthy community of practice focused on building field-level capacity for long-term access and reuse of software. SPN members design and complete research into evolving practice, affiliated projects and working groups identify common needs that allow SPN member organizations to make strategic digital curation decisions, and the nimble SPN staff provides the training and coordination necessary to distribute software preservation skills across a broader set of individuals.
As we look to the future, we recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic is presenting unprecedented challenges to organizations and individuals across the information stewardship landscape. The pandemic is also highlighting the critical role that member communities play in organizational resilience and continuing support of the research enterprise.
By investing in SPN, your organization will join a network of software preservation professionals that are distributing the risk and lowering the actual cost of the work for any one organization, while simultaneously sharing ownership over the strategic direction of the field and the use of collective resources.
If you would like an opportunity to ask questions and hear directly from current SPN members and staff, register for our upcoming virtual information session on Monday, August 17 at 1:00-2:00 pm ET. In the meantime, for more information on the Software Preservation Network, check out our membership flyer, visit our Get Involved Page, or reach out to SPN's community facilitator, Jess Farrell, at <jess.f...@educopia.org>.
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The SPN Return on Investment: What are our members saying?
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"SPN is a unique organization—it brings people together from a broader swath of the landscape than other digital preservation/curation communities. We are a community of various institutional and international perspectives, unbound by the silos and hierarchy that can limit this kind of transformational work." -Wendy Hagenmaier, Georgia Tech
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"SPN has been a phenomenal community to be a part of, especially because of the many types of institutions involved. Having a lot of different GLAMs involved means that the strategies for scaffolding legal, technical, and social infrastructure will be more robust and adopt-able by many, which ultimately helps the entire software preservation endeavor."
-Vicky Steeves, New York University
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"Being part of the SPN community membership has provided UVA Library with myriad benefits—as a preservationist, one of the most important is the ability to benefit from a cohort with wide-ranging expertise that foregrounds sharing knowledge and documentation, provides transparent technical troubleshooting, and is building sustainable best practice in real time."
-Lauren Work, University of Virginia
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Mark Your Calendars: Upcoming Law & Policy Chat on August 6
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If you're at a SPN member institution, mark your calendars for the next Law & Policy Chat on Thursday, August 6 from 3:00 to 4:00 pm ET. It's your monthly opportunity to chat with SPN's Law and Policy Advisor, Brandon Butler, about your software preservation questions and concerns.
All members should have received call-in information via email. We look forward to seeing you there!
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Upcoming Quarterly Community Forum Rescheduled for Sept. 15
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The Software Preservation Network invites you to join us for the upcoming Quarterly Software Curation and Preservation Community Forum taking place on Tuesday, September 15 at 8 am PT/10 am CT/11 am ET. Each quarter, we invite our colleagues across professional and disciplinary communities to participate in an hour-long discussion on topics related to software curation, preservation, and reuse. The Quarterly Community Forum is free and open to all (you do not have to be a SPN member to attend or participate).
As a subscriber to to the Software Preservation Network listserv, you will receive reminders, calendar invites, and call-in information for the QCF via email.
If you are interested in discussing a specific topic during future Community Forums, submit your topics and questions via Google form.
Note: The Software Preservation Quarterly Community Forum was originally scheduled for September 8. Due to the Labor Day holiday, the Forum has been rescheduled for September 15.
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Learn about SPN affiliated project activities and milestones. SPN affiliated projects focus on specific aspects of software preservation/curation that support the strategic goals of SPN.
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Timeline: January 2018 – June 2020
Funder(s): Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Awardee: Yale University
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Timeline: June 2017 – May 2020
Funder(s): Institute for Museum and Library Services #RE-95-17-0058-17
Awardee: CalPoly State University
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Now that the Fostering Communities of Practice (FCoP) project has officially wrapped, the staff are proud to present the rich suite of resources and documentation produced by the FCoP cohort and project team over the past two years. Our new project site tells the story of the project, from insights and process documents created by the cohort to a research paper by project researcher Dr. Amelia Acker based on her observations of three FCoP cohort sites. The site also provides a wealth of ready-to-use resources for organizations and practitioners to explore software curation locally or advance their existing software curation efforts.
We invite you to dig into the rich and varied materials created by the cohort and project team!
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The Software Preservation Network (SPN) facilitates and supports software preservation efforts. SPN preserves software through community engagement, infrastructure support, and knowledge generation in five core activity areas including Law & Policy Advocacy, Metadata & Standards Development, Training & Education, Research-in-Practice, and Technological Infrastructure.
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Do you appreciate the work that SPN has been doing over the last several years to broaden participation and ensure lawful preservation, sharing, and reuse of software? Would you like to SPN to continue its work of coordination, research, advocacy, and capacity building? Do you have ideas or a vision for the future of software preservation that you would like to see realized through the SPN community?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, then consider supporting our work through membership or sponsorship. To learn more about the benefits of membership and sponsorship, visit: https://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/get-involved/
To join, download, complete and submit your SPN Membership Agreement to <jess.f...@educopia.org>.
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