Dear Lydia,

You’ve asked about the list’s opinion on emulation. Well, for some 
electronic objects (programs, games etc.) it’s the only solution. But 
emulation requires skills, “museum” software and hardware, often fails, and 
may be difficult to defend in courts of law. However, I’d recommend 
considering emulation as a useful migration tool.

At present migration (or, if you prefer to align with the brand-new ISO 
terminology, as per ISO 30300, - “conversion”) seems to be the mainstream 
approach. However, check the laws and regulations in your jurisdiction. In 
my country, for example, the law doesn’t provide for the legal recognition 
of migrated records. You may end up keeping originals as the proof and 
migrated versions for accessibility.

Your best short-term strategy is probably switching to the file formats 
suitable for long-term preservation (the less frequently you migrate the 
records, the better!).

Be especially careful with digital signatures (if you use them), they can 
become a real pain in the long-term.

There are useful standards i.e. ISO/TR 18492:2005 "Long-term preservation of 
electronic document-based information", ANSI/ARMA 16-2007 "The Digital 
Records Conversion Process: Program Planning, Requirements, Procedures" (now 
being converted into ISO 13008 Information and documentation — Digital 
records conversion and migration process)

With my best wishes,
Natasha

*    *    *
Dr Natasha Khramtsovsky
Member, ARMA & Records Managers' Guild (Russia),
Senior RIM expert,
Electronic Office Systems LLP, Moscow, Russia

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