European Directory of Creative Computing Preservation Initiatives

Background

As part of the COST GRADE project we are developing an European Directory of Creative Computing Preservation Initiatives. We hope that this list will help bring greater visibility to the many passionate initiatives working across Europe towards safeguarding born-digital heritage. Not only to preserve hardware and software but also to record the histories of the people that shaped them and the communities they built together.

We use the term creative computing (more information here) to bring together a wide range of practices and communities related to computer art, the demoscene, digital privacy, electronic music, hacking, retrogaming, right to repair and video games.

Submissions

We are looking for initiatives located in Europe*, such as museums, exhibitions, dedicated non-profit organizations, restoration projects, digital archives and more. To make a submission, please provide the following publicly available information:

1. The full name of the initiative.
2. The country of origin of the initiative.
3. The city/address where the initiative is located (if possible).
4. A link to the initiative’s website or social media account.

*For the purpose of this directory, we are interested in all European countries, as well as COST Full Member countries.

Progress

Special thanks

Directory Team

Annex. Data-set categorization (in progress)

ORIGIN:

Private – first spark came from grassroots (e.g. Računalniški muzej)

Hybrid  – both grassroots and public actors involved (e.g. Suomen pelimuseo)

Public – first spark came from a public institution (e.g. CKINI Łódź)

LEGAL STATUS:

Informal – not registered as a legal entity

Registered – registered as a legal entity

COLLECTION CUSTODIANSHIP*:

Public (State) – custodianship provided by a state institution with a public mandate (e.g. physical collection in a national museum) or a digital public good service (e.g. born-digital collection hosted in the Europeana network)

Public (Local) – same as state but for a local authority such as a city (e.g. municipal) or an administrative region (e.g. Land in Germany), it could also be a company controlled by a local authority

Public benefit (denotation differs on a local legislation (e.g. charity in UK) – it is a national legal designation granted to organizations whose primary mission is to serve the general public interest on a non-profit basis (i.e. often possible to check the status via a tax office registry, as such initiatives usually have a special tax status)

Private – custodianship provided by a private entity (e.g. a physical collection owned by a museum which is a private company) or a born-digital collection hosted on a privately financed service (e.g. scene.org).

*the reasoning is that collections hosted by public good institutions require some level of accountability to European citizens, while private collections have no such responsibilities.

ACCESSIBILITY:

Local – communication only in the national language

International – communication in more than one language, or in English, French, Spanish, Russian (as per se international)

LAST ACTIVE (OPERATIONAL STATUS):

• We start by adding the date of the last last-recorded activity (e.g. on website or social media): XXXX-YY-ZZ,
• Following data collection in mid-October, threshold criteria for active, dormant, and discontinued statuses will be established based on the temporal distribution of last-recorded activity across the dataset.