Digital Heritage – archive

Melanie Swalwell, Maria B. Garda, David Murphy We are running panels on this theme at a number of conferences, with the intention of compiling an anthology. We invite submissions for just a conference panel, or panel and the anthology, or just the anthology. Please be...

Melanie Swalwell, Maria B. Garda, David Murphy We seek proposals for papers on user hacking and making with a range of analog and digital media/technologies in a variety of temporal and regional contexts. From model railroad clubs in North America to coffee shops in...

The anthology Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives, edited by Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey, and Angela Ndalianis, has now been published by Routledge. Thanks to all our wonderful contributors!

The last chapters in the 8″ disk recovery project have been posted on Open Preservation Foundation’s website. 8″ Disk Recovery: Kryoflux and Catweasel Hovering just above the Magnetic Flux Counting Ones and Zeros 8 inch Disks HP9845 endeavour – Success at Last This...

The Investigator Transformed exhibition and book is a celebration of 50 years of Flinders University. One of the featured stories is about the Computer Archaeology Lab and the Play It Again project. Read and watch the video in the “Game On” article.

After we found out about the fdrawcmd and the characteristics of the Nashua disk and its track 0, we hoped to reproduce it on the relevant disks. Unfortunately no success here. We had to rule out possible problems like: The disks were not formatted at all (because of...

Proceeding with our 8″ recovery project: After a short while the 24V power supply and the cable adapter board arrived from the U.S. Both have power requirements and fit traditional PC power cable sockets. To actually connect the 8” drive without external power...

We are launching a comparative site to discuss and capture memories of early microcomputing, between Australia and Korea in the 1980s. This cross-cultural project is intended to be a participatory archive of experiences and memories of early popular computing,...

The university archive in Freiburg recently received a set of 8” floppy disks which might contain interesting case and research data. The hand-over procedure did not generate much valuable information, but just a stack of those disks with some additional paper stuck...

Over the last 30 years many hardware concepts became obsolete. Parallel data cables are not common any more. They were superseded by fast serial connections like e.g. SATA for traditional parallel IDE. One of the longest lasting standards, the 34 pin floppy controller...

Our Digital Heritage collaborator, Dr Dongwon Jo, has been awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Korean National Research Foundation. Currently the recipient of an Endeavour Award, Dongwon has been at Flinders for the last 5 months, conducting...

On 15 and 16 August, Dr de Vries visited the Utrechts Archives and National Archives in The Netherlands. Utrecht Archives The municipality of Utrecht and the Utrecht Archives are collaborating on the project e-depot (electronic deposit).  They are researching the...

Gastwissenschaftlerin aus Adelaide am RZ / Lehrstuhl für Kommunikationssysteme Das Rechenzentrum bzw. die Gruppe FDM/Digitaler Langzeitzugriff dürfen im Augenblick eine Gastwissenschaftlerin von der Flinders University / Southern Australia in Freiburg begrüßen. Sie...

Between 18-20 July, Melanie Swalwell will attend the 2016 Born Digital Archiving Exchange, at Stanford University. Organised by staff from Stanford University Libraries, the event is intended as an opportunity for experts to share ideas, techniques and best practices...

In late May, we’ll be hosting Dr Lori Emerson, from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Lori will be giving a number of talks at Flinders, the details of which are below, along with her bio. She is visiting in conjunction with Melanie Swalwell’s Future Fellowship...

To see a gallery of some of the computer systems we have in our lab, please go to csem.flinders.edu.au/thegoodstuff/comparch/. We have selected photos and information about our equipment, much of which has been donated. The collection ranges in age from the mid 1970s...

Dr Craig Mudge AO, foundation professor of Computer Science at Flinders 1990-94, visited the Computer Archaeology Lab today. Dr Mudge received the Officer for the Order of Australia, in January 2016, for his work in science, particularly through pioneering initiatives...

On Friday 18th December, Prof Erik Champion (Curtin University) will be presenting a seminar on his research.  All welcome. Details: 3:30-4:30pm at Flinders Tonsley campus, Room 5.29.  Ample free parking is available.  Directions are available here.  A tour of the...

Melanie Swalwell, co-convenor of the Digital Heritage research group, launched a short 6 min film on her Future Fellowship research project into ‘Creative Microcomputing’ last week. The film features some of the great people and a range of the digital heritage...

The computer archaeology lab is seeking the following items for our preservation work. Monitor with SCART connector Disk drive for an Apple IIc Commodore 128D keyboard Dual audio cassette player/recorder Also, we need disk boxes for 3.5″ and 5.25″ diskettes. If you...

Dr Denise de Vries has been invited to join the UNESCO PERSIST (Platform to Enhance the Sustainability of the Information Society Transglobally) project taskforce The UNESCO PERSIST project, a cooperation between UNESCO, the International Council on Archives (ICA),...

Today we hosted a visit from members of staff from the State Library of South Australia who came to see how we captured the digital images of legacy computer disk materials. A lively and productive discussion was held about the urgency of digital preservation and how...

A wonderfully productive week was had at Stanford University’s CaptureLab. It was sheer bliss to spend time with a group of people who all care about digital heritage. There were archivists, librarians, curators and computer scientists sharing information and...

Visiting scholar Dr Maria Garda (Univ of Lodz, Poland) and Helen Stuckey (PhD student, Flinders) will present their current research on Tuesday 4th August. 1:30-3:00pm at Flinders Tonsley campus, 4.28. Abstracts and bios are below. We will meet for lunch at Tonsley...

There is currently a position open for a Research Associate who will work on the “Play It Again” project, a multi-disciplinary project to create a playable history of Australasian digital games, for industry, community and research purposes. The focus of this research...

Today Tim hart will be exhibiting his honours project at the CSEM Expo, Tonsley. Tim has investigated a global standard for describing born-digital files, by extending (and improving) known standards of Dublin Core and PREMIS. Great work Tim

Mr David Fricker, who is the President of the International Council on Archives and Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, visited the Computer Archaeology Laboratory today. Dr de Vries and Mr Fricker discussed the complexities of digital preservation...

Last month, we were lucky enough to have a visit from Alan Laughton, of the Microbee Software Preservation Project (MSPP).  MSPP is a collaborator in the project we have been undertaking with the State Library of South Australia, “Computer Disk Collections at the...

Marty Gauvin (Tier 5 and Flinders University Council) officially launched our new Computer Archaeology Lab last Thursday, 30th April.  You can read the press release about it here. Several media outlets (including The Advertiser and ABC Perth) were good enough to pick...

There will be a lunchtime research seminar of the Dept of Screen and Media, on Monday 4th May from 1pm, featuring papers by two scholars, Graeme Kirkpatrick (UK/Sweden) and Melanie Swalwell (Flinders), working in the emerging field of game history. You are welcome to...

On Wed 29th April, Graeme Kirkpatrick will give a lecture at Flinders entitled “How gaming became sexist: a study of UK gaming magazines 1981-1995”.  The abstract is below. 2pm in Sturt Theatre.  All welcome! Graeme is visiting Adelaide as one of the international...

Craig Harrington, a PhD candidate in the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics and a valued member of the Play It Again project team, died 7 October 2014. After completing a BSc and BSc (Honours First Class), Craig was awarded a scholarship to pursue...

I got my first look inside our Computer Archaeology Lab today, part of the new Flinders Tonsley campus. We’ve started moving our computers from the main campus to here, unpacking boxes, stacking shelves, and setting up our disk imaging stations. There are lots of...

Today we had a great presentation from Dr Klaus Rechert and Dr Dirk von Suchodoletz  from University of Freiburg about their work on emulation as a cloud service. The link to the demo site for their work is https://demo.bw-fla.uni-freiburg.de/ Login using the username...

A strong candidate (1st class Hons in a relevant field) is sought to join our growing digital heritage research team at Flinders.  You will undertake a PhD researching the history of educational software in 1980s Australia. Details and application materials are here. ...

Dr Klaus Rechert and Dr Dirk von Suchodoletz  from University of Freiburg will present a talk about emulation as a cloud service. Date: 3 October 2014  Time: 1pm Place: Teletheatre, IS & T Building (building 47, car park 15), Flinders University Dr Klaus Rechert...

Visiting net.art preservationist, Dr Anne Laforet, will be offering a masterclass where she will discuss two of the works she has studied in detail, JODI’s “OSS/••••” (1998-2005) and Antoine Schmitt’s “still living H, I, J” (2006).  As Laforet has written “[the work...

Flinders University and the State Library of South Australia are pleased to present talks from two internationally-renowned digital preservationists. Andreas Lange is the Director of the Computerspiele Museum, a unique museum in Berlin and one which was also a partner...

Several international experts in digital preservation will be visiting Flinders’ Digital Heritage research group in June 2014.  In Australia for the ‘Play It Again‘ project’s upcoming Born Digital and Cultural Heritage conference, to be held in Melbourne, 19-20 June,...

Convenors of the Digital Heritage research group, Denise de Vries and Melanie Swalwell, recently commenced a pilot research project with the State Library of South Australia, looking at their computer disk collections. The Library has a significant collection of...

Ian Welch from Victoria University visited Flinders this week to talk about progress on the New Zealand team’s remote emulation strategy for the Play It Again project. The team (Stuart Marshall and Tania Jacobs) are experimenting with a Javascript/HTML5 viewer for the...

Here is a quick roundup of the many very interesting projects that came up at our July meeting. We have become aware of a range of people doing some great work and took the opportunity to honour them with a mention, like Nick Marentes’ beautiful documentation of his...

The Play It Again team’s call for papers may be of interest to people reading this blog.  The theme is “The Born Digital and Cultural Heritage”.  The international conference will be held in Melbourne from 19-20 June, 2014.  Full details are here.

The next Digital Heritage research group meeting will be on Tuesday 23rd July, 12-2pm.  At this meeting, some of the Play It Again team will talk about the work they’re doing for the “Popular Memory Archive” which is currently under construction.  Here is a short...

The first meeting of the newly formed Digital Heritage research group was held on 25th March, 2013.  We had a great mix of internal Flinders people from both ‘sides of the lake’ as well as members of the community and representatives from the Adelaide cultural sector....