Organizations like the Internet Archive may be based in the United States, but media preservation is a global effort. Recently, Sky News Australia‘s Brent O’Halloran interviewed Prof. Melanie Swalwell and Dr. Cynde Moya of the Swinburne University of Technology in Victoria, Australia, about the school’s Digital Heritage Lab.
If we don’t actually collect and have this content accessible, we’re not going to be able to write histories of this period in the future.
Prof. Melanie Swalwell
The three-minute segment broadly touches on all media — books, films, television shows, and games. Although the Apple II is not mentioned specifically, an Apple 3.5″ floppy drive with Applesauce can be seen at 0:55 and 3:03 in the video.
Prof. Swalwell was also recently interviewed on this topic by Emily Chantiri of the Australian Computer Society; read that story at “The race to save Australia’s digital heritage“.
Parties interested in further discussions about the archiving of entertainment media are invited to “Save the Games: A Digital Preservation Symposium“, being held at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, this August 21–22, 2024.
(Hat tip to Melanie Swalwell via Brent O’Halloran, Alex Lee, and Andrew Roughan)