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Rescuing BBC Domesday
The CAMiLEON team have implemented an emulator that runs BBC Domesday on a modern computer. The purpose of this work has been to test and refine the digital preservation strategies developed by CAMiLEON. Research BBC Domesday is a complex system which required a good degree of research before a rescue attempt could be made. Enlisting the help of experts from the original Domesday team, searching for scarce documentation and experimenting with the actual system itself all played an important part in developing a picture of the preservation task. Rescue The Domesday discs contain data stored in two different forms, each of which must be rescued from the videodisc media, and transferred to a media independent form. The correct choice of underlying abstract form is crucial for accurate and economical preservation over time. Emulation In order to use the rescued Domesday data it must be "rendered". Given the complex and sizeable nature of the Domesday data, migration or recreation of the original interface software was not thought to be the best option for preservation. Emulation provides an ideal way of preserving this resource with the potential of also rendering the three follow up projects (Ecodisc, Volcanoes and Countryside) with minimal effort. By mimicking the function of the BBC Domesday hardware with a software program called an emulator the original Domesday software can be executed on a modern computer platform. This gives the added benefit of preserving the look, feel and function of the original application. Given the historical value of this landmark multimedia system this is an important aim of the preservation work. Bringing back the BBC Domesday experience The CAMiLEON team has successfully emulated BBC Domesday with its "DomesEm" demonstrator system. Starting with the "BeebEm" BBC Micro emulator developed by David Gilbert and Richard Gellman, CAMiLEON developed the software to support the additional functionality required to run BBC Domesday (see "What is BBC Domesday?"). The emulation work was presented to an invited audience of digital preservation experts and members of the original BBC Domesday team at "CAMiLEON : Emulation and BBC Domesday" on the 2nd December. This was widely publicized in the press.  
Screen shots of the BBC Domesday emulator in action The UK CAMiLEON team (now working on the JISC funded Representation and Rendering Project) are seeking funding to turn the demonstrator into a fully preserved system ready for archiving. Providing access to BBC Domesday is complicated by the issue of copyright. CAMiLEON hopes that owners of the original Domesday discs will be able to provide access to users of BBC Domesday running under emulation on a one user at a time per copy of the discs owned basis. For more information see Intellectual Property Rights and BBC Domesday. |
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