Emulation as a Business Solution: the Emulation Framework: Paper - iPRES 2011 - Singapore

Emulation is often considered a technically very complex subject. The association with complexity has long prevented it from being considered in an end-to-end business solution for long-term preservation and access to digital collections. The Emulation Framework solves this problem by automating the steps required to render an unknown digital object in its original environment: characterising the object to determine its type; determining the environment required to render that type of object; setting up the required software and emulators providing the hardware; and configuring the environment to properly render the digital object. Automating these steps allows a novice user to easily render a digital object in an environment for accessing it in its original form. Each of the four steps of the emulation workflow are described in detail, providing a simple tool for managing a complex decision making process