On February 4, 1992, Jonathan Larson saved a Microsoft Word document that grew, over four years, to become the musical RENT. Although Larson saved and resaved the file multiple times, at least some of the earlier drafts can be recovered thanks to Larson’s personal archival practices and a feature called “fast save” that was embedded in his copy of Microsoft Word 5.1. In this talk, Doug Reside, Digital Curator at the Library for the Performing Arts, will discuss the process he used to recover these early drafts and what his process suggests for the work of curators, scholars, and archivists in the future.

(via “How Do You Document Real Life”: A tale of RENT, Jonathan Larson’s floppy disks and digital forensics | The New York Public Library)

Where showtune geekery meets data geekery! Who’s with me!?