More Introductions-The Origin Museum
Greetings!
My name is Joe, and my wife and I run a webpage (and physical museum) titled 'The Origin Museum'. We specialize in software and artifacts from Origin Systems. Being that there are so many aspects of preservation, we decided to focus on preservation of a company, rather than an area. It has paid off tremendously, because I feel that we have been exposed to all the various areas of game preservation:
* Software (data)
* Hardware (systems, media formats, etc)
* Packaging (boxes, trinkets, maps, foreign releases, variations, etc)
* Documentation (manuals, production scripts, concept art, demos)
* Promotional (give aways, special offers, posters, reviews)
* Memorabilia (Interactive movie costumes +props, Special Edition extras, game completion certificates, etc)
* Lore (Industry stories, events, cancelled games, history)
It has been a very rewarding experience--we've made some wonderful friends in our travels, and we feel that we are making a difference in preserving, and sharing a very important part of our cultural heritage.
Over the next few weeks, I'm sure that I'll have lots of questions, and hope that I can provide some helpful input into the preservation forums.
Please feel free to ask questions about our little museum--I love showing off our work! 
"...Preserving Worlds..."
Joe Garrity
Curator of The Origin Museum
http://www.originmuseum.net
Thanks for the kind words, Craig!
Please understand that the website is still in it's infancy--the real work is the physical museum itself! But I always hated those 'pardon our dust' and 'under construction' graphics!
I agree that the Wing Commander page needs to be cleaner--I was just more concerned at the time to get the information on that page, and the 'pretty-pretty' comes after. I like your idea of box cover graphic link buttons, but I think I'll also put the game name next to it (under it?) also--some people may have never seen that game before! 
My site started with just a means to show off my collection, but is now growing to include all aspects of preservation--hopefully, in a few months, there will be more content.
I'm now mostly interested in other people's work in preservation, and whether this forum can be used as a place to build a foundation for defining this new field.
"...Preserving Worlds..."
Joe Garrity
Curator of The Origin Museum
http://www.originmuseum.net
As Origin is pretty much dead, it might be possible to actually host downloads of their older games plus emulators (where necessary). I understand it might not be possible, bandwidth-wise or for other reasons, but it's something to consider, especially if you have contacts that might help obtain permission.
That would make your museum get visited a lot more. A LOT more.
-Craig
Beware copyright and trademark issues. IP has a very long life.
These potential issues can be solved by finding out who, if anyone, is still owning or controlling such things. A license for using these could be very inexpensive or even free given the altruistic intent of your project.
The purpose of my webpage is to assist in the areas of preservation and collecting...since the IP waters are murky, I tend to leave the downloads to others (heck, if you want to get the old programs, you CAN get them pretty easily).
That DOES bring up another area that I will be addressing soon. With all of the grey area in the digital copyright laws (people interpreting them in different ways), I plan on setting up a meeting with a member of the SIIA, to give a 'bottom-line' interview on what IS, and what IS NOT piracy, in regard to preservation. For example:
If I have a copy of a game in Apple format, can I legally get a digital copy for IBM?
If my disks are bad, can I get a copy from somewhere else?
How about emulators? If I have an Apple game, but not the Apple hardware, can I download an Apple emulator, and a copy of the game?
I know we all *think* we know the answers to these questions, but I want an article that cuts through the interpretation, and gets to the 'horses mouth'.
Joe
If you manage this, please post the answers here and/or do a White Page.
-Craig
Hey guys,
Quite a few of these questions were answered by the Internet Archive's lawyers during our successful attempt to get a DMCA Exemption for classic software:
http://www.archive.org/about/dmca.php
If you trawl through the documents there, you'll find some pretty useful material. The bottom line is that official libraries or institutions are currently allowed to circumvent access protection in order to make digital copies of obsolete software, as _I_ understand it. You still need a copy of the original physical media, naturally, and all copyrights are still honored. However, I am not a lawyer and cannot give advice, for obvious reasons.
It would certainly be nice to get a lawyer to write up a page about this, preferably a lawyer who could work for free and who's got the correct litigation insurance, heh. The person we used for the Archive's DMCA action now works at Google and isn't available to help any more.
Thanks, and congrats on the Origin Museum - I've checked it out before, and it's genuinely spectacular.
Thanks,
Simon.
I still have Ultima7 Serpent Isle loaded on my 486DX. This brings back fond memories.
Still works until now. Like those motion sensors used on some games and other programs.
Neat! Kind of a preponderance of Wing Commander, though.
Good stories, fairly professional in layout and design.
My only advice would be to change from hard blue links for the links-to-games pages. Instead of a marching column of links, I would probably use the labels on the boxes. That would, to me, be more professional and also more interesting.
-Craig