Development of a Universal Virtual Computer (UVC) for long-term preservation of digital objects

Emulation has been proposed as a preservation strategy for longevity of digital objects. An advantage of emulation is the relative platform independency. Emulation with a high degree of platform independency requires a Universal Virtual Computer (UVC), as described by Lorie. This paper describes the realization of the enhanced UVC developed for the National Library of the Netherlands. The preservation method of the UVC at preservation time and at retrieval time (in the future) is concisely described, the conceptual model of the UVC is given, and the object design and the logical data viewer of the UVC are presented. The UVC has been realized and proven to work for image types using the JPEG and GIF87a formats, although performance of the present UVC can still can be improved. The UVC demonstration tool is freely available at the Alphaworks web site to let the general public experience this approach on long-term access.