Ellie O'Leary is the Administration Manager at the DPC and a part-time PGR student at the University of Glasgow.
There have been some excellent blog posts detailing how the Bit List has been used in various organizations, but I wanted to take this in a more individual direction.
So, if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to take you back to September 2020 when I started the Masters’ course in Information Management and Preservation at the University of Glasgow. One of the modules in the first semester was “Introduction to Digital Curation” where our first assignment was to take a Bit List entry and write a data report on preserving an example from this entry. To no one’s surprise, I was drawn to the Gaming species and wrote a 2000+ word data report on preserving Wii Fit, based on the mention of unique peripherals on the “Old or Non-current Offline Video Games” entry. This report dived into various elements, from significant properties of video games (hello Preserving Virtual Worlds report!) to the legal challenges of emulation and introduced me to a whole new world.
I was familiar with the concept of video game preservation prior to this, mainly through community preservation projects, but this deeper dive gave me a greater understanding and appreciation of the research into in this area. It sparked an idea in my head, and I went on to use the Bit List again as part of my research proposal when I was applying to undertake postgraduate research at the University of Glasgow. This time, I quoted from the Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Platforms and Experiences entry, noting the growing importance of MMOs during the pandemic. And whilst I was not successful with funding, my application was accepted, and I am now a part-time PGR student.
For me, then, the Bit List was an easy, digestible entry into further research of video game preservation, and now I am delighted to be a Bit List Council member contributing specialist knowledge on the gaming species alongside Matt Barr. I like to think that this will enable others to learn more about at-risk digital species and, either make a stronger case for their preservation, or get involved in further research themselves.
I will leave you with some words of wisdom from budding digital preservationist Ellie:
Digital preservation can only be done well and legally if it is done as a collaborative effort.