The EaaSI team is pleased to kick off our EaaSI Case Study series with “The Would-Be Gentleman.”
The EaaSI Case Study series consists of deep dives into emulation environments, highlighting specific use cases. Every six months a new case study is published on the Software Preservation Network website and features the following information about a specific emulation environment:
About the group or unit that selected and worked on the emulation case study
Any emulation challenges the team was expecting
The audience for the emulation environment
The tool chain used to create the environment
The process of creating and testing the emulation case study,
Reflections on overcoming emulation roadblocks, and
How/where to access the emulation online
About EaaSI Case Study #1: “The Would-Be Gentleman”
Created in 1985 by Stanford history professor, Carolyn Lougee, “The Would-Be Gentleman” is a floppy disk simulation in which players (students) must manage the economic and social life of a French bourgeois during the life and reign of Louis XIV of France. Dr. Lougee created the simulation to supplement her history seminar entitled “The France of Louis XIV.”
Josh Schneider, Stanford University Archivist, selected “The Would-Be Gentleman,” as an illustrative example from a University Archives collection featuring a range of academic software developed by Stanford faculty members over the years. Stanford Digital Archivist, @aschweik worked with EaaSI Software Preservation Analyst, @ethan.gates, to identify the necessary pieces for testing.
Warm thanks to Stanford University Archives and Stanford Libraries Born-Digital Preservation Lab (BDPL) for bringing this case study to life!
Going through the SPN bibliography Zotero | Your personal research assistant there are a ton of case studies in this collection. It’s really remarkable. Has anyone used this to write a literature review?
Cynde
Hi @Cynde_Moya! It’s a great question - one of my goals in collecting those links and resources was indeed to put as many case studies as possible in one place to help give folks “ammunition”. (And, we still plan to release more like “The Would-Be Gentleman” ourselves - I’m working on new one as we speak!)
But, as far as I am aware, there has not been a more formal literature review or analysis of the available resources and discussions around emulation for a while. They are both also contained in that Zotero library, but the Software Preservation Lit Review from the early days of SPN and Amelia Acker’s recent paper come to mind in terms of trying to describe trends and theorize or categorize case studies. @jmeyerson and I have discussed recently that we could use more such scholarly analysis to help turn the tide of emulation from curio or “nice to have” to necessary preservation infrastructure. Very much looking forward to the imminent ACM article on emulation + pedagogy from @ekaltman and Carnegie Mellon folks on this front as well.
(Also, speaking of case studies, I just noticed that this terrific report from our friends in the Dutch Digital Heritage Network is missing from the Zotero library, if you haven’t seen it yet. I’ll try to get it added. There are probably some more Crown Jewel possibilities in there!)