Joe Garrity has released a teaser for a new video series he’s been planning for a while now. Entitled Origin Museum – Digital Preservation, the series will focus on Joe’s incredible collection of Origin Systems stuff — copies of games, props, documents, and other materials — which we all know as The Origin Museum. Some notable artefacts visible in the video include the head of Hobbes (from Wing Commander 3), a boxed copy of The Silver Seed, and a large ankh. The video itself is shot as a quite decent parody of the opening bit from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The focus of the series will be on digital archaeology, and on the nature of the work that is required to preserve digitally-stored information from decades past. His hope, as I understand it, is to give people some insight into the sometimes considerable effort that is required to preserve files and media for posterity, and to solicit advice from the community on ways to improve his own techniques for doing the same.

And perhaps more importantly, his hope is to emphasize that sometimes, digital archaeology reveals…very little. That mislabeled archive file could possibly contain the installation files for The Lost Vale, but it could just as easily be corrupt beyond the point of recognition, or it could contain nothing more than some internal memos regarding proof copies of diskette labels for one of the Jane’s games.

So…this is the first video of what will hopefully be many. Stay tuned to Joe’s YouTube channel for updates!