Greetings and salutations, @eaasi-alliance members!
I am pleased to remind you that our next EaaSI Network call (and last of the year - where has 2023 gone??) will be in three weeks on Tuesday, November 7 at 4pm ET / 3pm CT / 1pm PT. As always the pinned EaaSI Bimonthly Network Call Info topic in the Forum has the most up-to-date Zoom and calendar info to add to your platform of choice.
I am also pleased to share details of our planned agenda, where we’ll be drafting off of this season’s hottest #digipres topic - that’s right, we’re going to talk about how to make video game preservation EaaSIer (
)!
There have been wonderful opportunities of late hosted by SPN in cooperation with Library Futures and the Open Preservation Foundation, to discuss the SPN/VGHF co-sponsored “Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States”, growing efforts to support games within the wider digital and software preservation communities of practice, and related efforts by the Harvard CyberLaw Clinic and SPN Law & Policy Working Group to broaden the exemption available for libraries and archives interested in video game preservation under the DMCA. We also hope you’ve all seen (and had a chance to fill out, if relevant!) the Video Game Preservation Survey currently being distributed by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, the British National Archive, and The Strong International Center for the History of Electronic Games. (The EaaSI team hasn’t had any direct affiliation or involvement with these efforts - but we’re big fans!!!)
But as a remote emulation platform, EaaSI has a particular - and complex! - relationship with games. We want to dig into that further with our user community.
Have you tried to play a game in EaaSI? Have you had access/patron/researcher requests for games in your collection, and either evaluated or resolved access using EaaSI? Or do you just want to hear from other folks who have? Please save the date - and feel free to pass along this message and call details to other staff, students, or faculty at your organization who maybe miss the days when Minesweeper and Solitaire came baked in with our work-provided workstations 
(As always - if you or a colleague are having any issues with Forum and/or Zoom access, please drop me a line either directly in the Forum or at ethan.gates at yale.edu!)
Draft Agenda (11/7/2023):
- Intros and settling in (in chat)
- Icebreaker: Favorite (currently unavailable to you) video game?
- EaaSI Program status updates
- Recent progress on:
- Sustainability/hosting work with YUL
- Support for expanding DMCA exemption for preserving general-purpose software
- AusEaaSI collaboration
- Recent progress on:
- Making video game preservation EaaSIer?
- EaaS/I history with video games + emulators
- Technical challenges of emulator adaptation
- DMCA/TPM challenges
- Previously established and/or ongoing case studies
- Questions for discussion:
- Who has ever tried to play a game in EaaSI?
- Who has had access/patron/researcher requests for games in their collection? Were they resolved using EaaSI, or a different method? (If so, what method?)
- Where/how does playing a game in EaaSI differ from other access methods? (Including both “pros” - features or functionality that might make EaaSI more convenient for research/scholarship/access; and “cons” - drawbacks or limitations of remote emulation)
- Are there specific emulators you know would address materials in your collection if they were available/supported in EaaSI?
- EaaS/I history with video games + emulators
)