Preservation

The final step in our process was to think about long-term access and preservation. Given the unpredictable rate of technological change, we can never be fully sure of the persistence of the underlying elements used in these projects (Google and Knightlab visualization tools), and thus cannot guarantee that the students' projects will be accessible in the future. In response, we developed the following preservation solution:

1. Require students to turn in their data files (Excel spreadsheets for their Timelines; Word documents for their StoryMaps). This will allow us to recreate the projects should anything happen to the original projects. For example: in a previous semester, a student deleted the Google Template for her TimelineJS project at the conclusion of the semester. We were unable to recover the project, since she had not downloaded the spreadsheet.
2. Document the projects through static screenshots and short recordings that could demo the interactive features of the projects.
3. Pilot a new archiving process using SDSU Library's new Institutional Repository, SDSUnbound (built on Islandora). We selected 5-10 student projects to pilot this process. We chose representative projects from among those who volunteered to participate.
4. Develop documentation for the students to record their own interactive videos, using the Zoom web conferencing tool (freely available to all SDSU community members).
5. Develop a workflow to ingest the data files, screenshots, project demos, and metadata into the Repository.

Check out our initial projects at https://digitallibrary.sdsu.edu/digitalhumanities

Tutorial for Creating Interactive Video Demos (developed by Dr. Lach)