Design and Development of an Emulation-Driven Access System for Reading Rooms

Archives and libraries around the world are facing the same challenges with regard to accessing digital artefacts that reside on old media and require obsolete hardware, operating systems and applications to access the contents. We discuss a framework that delivers a modular and scalable platform that includes emulation of the original environments, extends existing reading room systems and facilitates appraisal and access of artefacts without undue overheads for institutional staff. The characterization and classification of objects can be automated based on the artefact's own contents. A guided system will ensure that the reading room client will interact with the historical artefact as though he/she were using the original equipment. A suitable framework should be equally viable as a distributed system where multiple institutions can share their resources and expertise to provide a cost effective system that presents a standard interface to users across organisations. Our paper presents the preliminary survey conducted in the involved libraries, a derived requirements analysis based on selected use-cases as well as the description of ongoing developments. These include the adaptation of Emulation-as-a-Service components to the individual needs of memory institutions.