A MITH Digital Dialogue

Tuesday, April 28, 12:30-1:45

MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135

"Preserving Virtual Worlds: A MITH Research Update"

By NEIL FRAISTAT, MATTHEW KIRSCHENBAUM, KARI KRAUS, and DOUG RESIDE

Interactive media are highly complex and at high risk for loss as technologies rapidly become obsolete. The Preserving Virtual Worlds project is actively exploring methods for preserving digital games and interactive fiction. Major activities include developing basic standards for metadata and content representation and conducting a series of archiving case studies for early video games, electronic literature and Second Life, an interactive multiplayer game. Project partners are the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (lead), the University of Maryland, Stanford University, Rochester Institute of Technology and Linden Lab. Second Life content participants include Life to the Second Power, Democracy Island and the International Spaceflight Museum. The Preserving Virtual Worlds project is funded by the Preserving Creative America initiative under the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP) administered by the Library of Congress. In this MITH Research Update, we will discuss the current state of the project eighteen months into the grant cycle, and suggest directions for future research.

NEIL FRAISTAT, Director of MITH & Professor of English

MATTHEW KIRSCHENBAUM, Associate Director of MITH & Associate Professor of English

KARI KRAUS, Assistant Professor in the iSchool and English

DOUG RESIDE, Assistant Director of MITH & Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater

Coming up @MITH 5/5: Katie King (Women’s Studies), “Networked Reenactments”

View MITH’s complete Digital Dialogues schedule here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100615144914/http://www.mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_spring_2009.pdf

All talks free and open to the public!

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-8927).