Interactive media are highly complex and at high risk for loss as technologies rapidly become obsolete.  The Preserving Virtual Worlds project will explore methods for preserving digital games and interactive fiction.  Major activities will 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.

More information about the Preserving Virtual Worlds project is provided in this interim web site.  For further information, please contact project coordinator Maeve Reilly (mjreilly@illinois.edu).  For more information about NDIIPP and its associated initiatives, please visit http://www.digitalpreservation.gov, or contact Guy Lamolinara at the Library of Congress (glam@loc.gov).