Now that the Making Data Last episode of the Code for Thought podcast is live, I wanted to write up some related thoughts, along with some pointers to other episodes I’ve found interesting1.
Digital preservation is a cross-cutting concern. It reflects the frailties of our common digital infrastructure, but it shows up in different ways depending on the domain. This makes it difficult to cohere. To get together and stay aligned. It spreads people and funding thin.
But on the plus side, it means there are always new neighbouring communities to discover, and new allies to find. The trick is finding each other.
So I want thank James Baker for suggesting that Peter get in touch with the DPC, after recording his episode on Digital Humanities at Southampton. It illustrates how interdisciplinary individuals like James can link up communities because the have a foot in both camps.
Another ’tell’ for finding communities with common digital challenges is through the tools they talk about. I’d already listened to other episodes on Code for Though, talking about some tools that are important to me:
Both I’ve been experimenting with, with an eye to developing sustainable publishing pipelines as part of the Registries of Good Practice and Future Nostalgia projects.
So I encourage you to flip through the back catalogue of the Code for Thought podcast and see what other common concerns come up. Like, say, the episodes on digital carbon footprints, or Carpentries for All
But most of all, I remain struck by how the recent(ish) focus on reproducibility in research outputs really is digital preservation. Sure, it’s near-term rather than the long-term perspective we tend to focus on. But what is the long-term but a whole lot of near-terms strung together! Or put another way, if we can’t reproduce those results tomorrow, what chance does posterity have?
I’ve long been an admirer of The Turing Way and it’s focus on reproducible research and community building. The Code for Thought episodes about them (Happy Birthday - The Turing Way Part 1, The Turing Way Part 2: From Handbook to Community) were my introduction to the podcast in the first place.
The reproducible research community seems like one we should have much stronger links with. So after listening to ByteSized: how to get your (digital) ducks in a row - with Richard Acton, I reached out to him, and I’m very grateful that he accepted the offer to present at the event I’m running next week: Every Object An Orchestra: A Software Preservation & Emulation Showcase
I was surprised by how nervous I was about being on the Code for Thought podcast. I guess because it’s going out to a new and unfamiliar audience. A new community.
And I’m a bit nervous about the event next week, because it’s a whole set of new people from a much wider range of communities than I’ve worked with before.
But I’m also excited about the event next week, because it’s a whole set of new people from a much wider range of communities than I’ve worked with before.
And no matter how the event goes, I’m hoping we can start to forge connections that we can all build on in the future.
I’ll pass over the one called fun with floating points in case it propels back into the past trauma of my physicist days, and my life becomes a waking nightmare filled with wretched rendering from failed simulations. ↩︎