Project at the library for Japanese and Korean Studies for the conservation of outdated multimedia materials and make them publically available.

Working for the Japanese and Korean department of Leiden University for several years I often came accross (Japanese or Korean) multimedia materials in our library which either would not run anymore on their standard computer platform (Windows XP) as in the case of software or were deteriorating in the case of video, cassette tapes and slides.

A tough decision had to be made. Should we give up the materials or should we try to save them using modern technologies? We chose the latter. So I wrote a plan in 2007 which was graciously supported by the I. A. Ailion Foundation at Leiden University.

After a thorough selection it was decided that titles nowadays available on DVD or CD would be bought. The other 800 video tapes, sound tapes, cassette tapes and slides were digitised and put on a 3.4 TB hard disk connected to a Mac with iTunes installed in the media centre of the library which in its turn is connected to a wide screen TV. Now teachers, students and visitors can still enjoy lot of older materials which otherwise would have been lost.

The outdated software and multimedia titles about 75 in total were all installed on a virtual machine prepared with VM Ware Fusion for Mac. Older systems like Windows 95/98/2000, Japanese and Korean versions, are now running smoothly side by side .

This project would not have been possible without the help of Ron van Oeveren, Jurre van der Meer and Edwin Michielsen.