ACMI — Collecting and Preserving Screen Culture

• Series: A field of practice
• Status: public scholarship
• Institutional author: 6529 Network Museum
• Version: 1.0.0
• Publication date: 2026-08-04
• Research cutoff: 2026-08-04
• Research apparatus: primary-source register

ACMI's Microgames Commission makes the obligations of a collecting museum concrete. The creator retains full rights; ACMI receives a playable copy and source code for its archive, permission to exhibit, and a record of preservation intentions and display parameters. The commission therefore joins legal status, executable materials, and future access without treating them as one fact.

Demonstrated practices

1. Acquisition and accession are different records

The ACMI Collection Strategy 2024–2029 distinguishes acquisition, accession, cataloguing, data, preservation, access, loans, storage, and deaccessioning. Acquisition transfers title through an agreement; accession follows approval, agreement, and receipt of materials. Cataloguing records interpretation, rights, creator, technical information, and management events such as display, storage, movement, loan, and preservation.

This vocabulary prevents a commission, loan, or public display from becoming an implied accession. It also gives a public record a place for technical and administrative events that would otherwise disappear into prose.

2. Commission terms carry preservation information

The Microgames page names the rights position, the archive package, exhibition permission, an exclusivity period, and the conversation through which ACMI records preservation intentions and display parameters. The playable copy and source code are related materials with different future uses: one supports access, while the other supports study and preservation.

The Museum should use the same distinction for executable works. A record should identify the constitutive package, the display package, the rights granted, and the evidence for each. It should not infer ownership from possession of a file.

3. Research display is not collection status

ACMI's Play It Again 2: Preserving Australian Videogames describes disk imaging, emulation, developer and player interviews, and access research. The page also states that the works presented are not in ACMI's collection. That sentence is an important control: research, exhibition, and collection management remain visible as separate relationships.

4. Preservation method is published as a sequence

The time-based media preservation resource moves from acquisition interview through appraisal, identification, authenticity, fixity, characterisation, significant properties, preservation metadata, and access. Its case discussion of generative work asks what should be retained about source code, software, hardware, executables, versions, behavior, interaction, and display.

Publication and scholarship

ACMI's strategy establishes a controlled vocabulary; its commission page translates that vocabulary into artist-facing terms; its preservation resource turns institutional casework into a public procedure; and its videogame project records a boundary between research display and collection. The writing is most useful when it names the status of a thing before explaining its significance.

What the Museum should adopt

• Record acquisition, accession, exhibition, research, loan, and hosted status separately.
• Request source code, executable or playable material, dependencies, display parameters, preservation intentions, and fixity evidence where relevant.
• Link creator rights and exhibition permission to the exact agreement or record.
• Publish preservation work as a dated sequence of observations, decisions, interventions, and unresolved differences.
• Use an explicit “not in collection” state when research or display does not establish accession.

Where the analogy ends

ACMI's source-code deposit is an agreement-specific archive arrangement, not proof that ACMI owns the work. Its lab, staffing, public mandate, and physical storage cannot be reproduced at equivalent scale by the 6529 Network Museum. The transferable practice is the separation of status, materials, rights, and preservation evidence.

Sources

1. Australian Centre for the Moving Image, “ACMI Collection Strategy 2024–2029”. Page last modified 20 March 2025. Accessed 2026-08-04. Supports: acquisition, accession, cataloguing, data, preservation, access, storage, and deaccessioning.
2. Australian Centre for the Moving Image, “Microgames Commission”. Page last modified 19 May 2026. Accessed 2026-08-04. Supports: creator rights, playable and source-code deposits, exhibition permission, and preservation/display information.
3. Australian Centre for the Moving Image, “Play It Again 2: Preserving Australian Videogames”. Exhibition previously displayed 10 August 2023. Accessed 2026-08-04. Supports: emulation, disk imaging, interviews, access research, and explicit non-collection status.
4. Australian Centre for the Moving Image, “Exhibiting, preservation and conservation of time-based media art”. Publication date not shown. Accessed 2026-08-04. Supports: preservation workflow and generative-work documentation questions.
5. Australian Centre for the Moving Image, “Collections & Preservation”. Page last modified 7 May 2026. Accessed 2026-08-04. Supports: collection search, commissions, preservation lab, and risk-guidance context.

Revision history

• 1.0.0 — 2026-08-04: initial profile of collection status, commissioning, videogame preservation, and technical publication.