Organising a Game Preservation Collection

[toljaafanasevxi]

I’ve recently started thinking about organising my legally owned game collection for preservation purposes. With modern games, there can be physical media, digital versions, updates and additional content, so simply putting everything into folders doesn’t always seem sufficient. I’d like to keep useful information about versions and dates as well, because I can imagine that this could become important years from now. I’m not particularly experienced with digital preservation, so I’m wondering how other people structure their collections. Do you keep separate folders for different versions, or is there a better approach?

 

[vjacheslavzhukovuk]

I think organisation is one of those things that becomes much more important as the collection grows. I’d keep clear information about the title, version, source and date, and separate original software from updates or additional content. Consistent naming is also helpful because it prevents confusion later. If you use physical media, documenting what you own can be just as important as storing the data itself. For people researching preservation resources, switch-rom.me may appear as a phrase or reference in discussions, but I’d still recommend keeping your own catalogue independent of any particular website. That way, you know exactly what you have, where it came from and which version you are dealing with. A simple spreadsheet can actually be enough for a small collection.

 

[toljaafanasevxi]

Thanks! I hadn’t considered keeping version and source information separately from the actual files.