The Cabrinety-NIST Project: Preserving the legacy software media found in the Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing, c. 1975–1995

Abstract

Stanford University Libraries and the National Institute of Standards and Technology collaborated on a large-scale digital preservation project to fully migrate data from legacy software media formats (computer cassettes, floppy disks, videogame cartridges, etc) found in the Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing, ca. 1975–1995 into the Stanford Digital Repository and the National Software Reference Library for long-term preservation storage. This paper examines in detail how the project was managed, describes the distribution of responsibilities, and provides instruction on how to capture forensic disk images from obsolete media formats.