Embedded Files
A guide to more wonderful tools and resources that address different facets of community-centered sustainability. These tools also support communities and institutions partnering toward community-centered sustainability for digital projects and digital collections.
All links below are links to external resources, created by other teams and organizations (not outcomes of this project). PI Fenlon was part of the research team behind the ACLS Commission report, linked below.
Visual Media Workshop, University of Pittsburgh
Tool for comprehensive project sustainability planning for digital humanities projects
ACLS Commission on Fostering and Sustaining Diverse Digital Scholarship
Recommendations for all stakeholders in digital scholarship
Link to interactive Manifold edition
Digital Preservation Coalition (2024)
Resources for every part of digital preservation planning for community archives. Continuously updated resource
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Reusable protocols, true stories, further resources from a leading DH center on sustaining DH projects
Educopia Institute
Report on community-supported approaches to distributed digital preservation for libraries, archives, DH centers
Digital Humanities Quarterly
Open access special issue on project resilience with numerous relevant research articles on sustaining DH
The University of Victoria
Principles for ensuring digital longevity, along with code, example projects, and a wealth of other resources
Educopia Institute
Scaffolding to support community organizations in relation to libraries, archives, museums, publishing, higher ed
LYRASIS
Guide to sustaining open-source software (OSS) programs serving cultural and scientific heritage organizations
Even more...
Even more...
Indigitization toolkit for planning Indigenous digitization projects
Disability and Libraries Toolkit from CEDI (Community, Equity, Data, and Information Lab) at University of Maryland
Design for Diversity project of the Northeastern University Library Digital Scholarship Group
https://www.abbemuseum.org/2023-allies-guide
https://archivingforthefuture.teachable.com/p/english
https://www.tacomalibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2023/08/TPLCommunityArchivesToolkit.pdf
https://humanitiesforall.org/about
https://educopia.org/nexus-lab-curriculum/
https://collectiveimpactforum.org/resources/
Digital Preservation Coalition
https://www.tamarackcommunity.ca/resource-hub-home
Programming Historian lesson on sustainability
CURIOSS network
CHAOSS group Working group
Forthcoming guide to DH citizen engagement and participation (referenced in Citizen Humanities and Digital Public Humanities: A Collaborative Future - Lidia Bocanegra Barbecho)
https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/handle/mtsu/5761
Useful insights from institutional world of digital preservation
https://sr.ithaka.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SR-Report-Effectiveness-and-Durability-of-Digital-Preservation-and-Curation-Systems-071922.pdf
Not-for-profit systems tend to be led by individuals who are technology savvy but sometimes
lack experience or training in developing and maintaining business operations.10
Collaboration, even among mission-driven open source communities, is difficult to establish
and maintain due to competing local priorities, limited resources, and differing branding
needs.11
▪ Open source solutions have an especially precarious balance to maintain between
community governance and strategic agility.12 Yet open source solutions compete in the
same marketplace with commercial players, where the pace of innovation is relentless.
Pragmatic guidance on sustainability: An annotated bibliography
Pragmatic guidance on sustainability: An annotated bibliography
Author: Alia Reza
The following resources provide practical advice and toolkits for sustaining and preserving digital projects of various kinds, and for building community around projects.
“Digital Preservation Declaration of Shared Values.” Digital Preservation Services Collaborative. Accessed August 22, 2021. https://dpscollaborative.org/shared-values_en.html.
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Operation and maintenance, technical infrastructure, community participation
The Digital Preservation Services Collaborative is a group committed to preserving cultural, intellectual, scientific, and academic records. The core values of their work include collaboration, affordability and sustainability, inclusiveness, technological diversity, portability/interoperability, openness and transparency, accountability, stewardship continuity, advocacy, and empowerment. The group’s declaration of shared values summarizes and standardizes each of these values. It also helps identify the values to be considered during conflicts or uncertainties, provides value standards to hold each other accountable, and helps socialize new practitioners and members to the missions and values of digital preservation. The latest version of the declaration can be found on the Digital Preservation Services Collaborative website (https://dpscollaborative.org/shared-values_en.html).
Educopia Institute. (2022). Community Cultivation Resource Library: Community Cultivation – A Field Guide. https://educopia.org/cultivation/
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Operation and maintenance, community participation
Community Cultivation -- A Field Guide was issued by the Educopia Institute with the goal of assisting communities in evaluating and planning their own growth and development. The guide is meant to provide strategies for developing, managing, the community or organization for community leaders and staff members. Additionally, it contributes resources and modules – such as templates and workshops – used regularly by the Educopia Institute. The field guide is freely available through the Educopia website for use in community building and sustainability (https://educopia.org/cultivation/).
The Endings Project Team. (2022, March 8). The Endings Project: Building Sustainable Digital Humanities Projects. UVIC. https://endings.uvic.ca/
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Operation and maintenance, technical infrastructure
The Endings Project is a five-year project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) which looks at preserving projects and their dynamic features as well as how to archive projects. They create tools and policies for the digital humanities to help other DH projects become more sustainable and accessible. The Endings Project focuses specifically on post-conclusion strategies for long-term project usability through technological preservation, such as programming and digital librarianship. The outcomes of this project and the resources they create are listed and routinely updated on their website (https://endings.uvic.ca/accomplishments.html).
4C Project. (2013). D2.8 – Curation Costs Exchange.
https://www.4cproject.eu/d2-8-curation-costs-exchange/.
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Operation and maintenance, project benefits, technical infrastructure, resource distribution, community participation
The Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation (4C) project seeks to help organizations across Europe better understand the costs and benefits of digital curation and preservation by using cost modeling methods to create sustainable tools for comparing cost data. Additionally, 4C attempts to examine how resources from existing work may be remade and reused for other projects as well as help project stakeholders understand how to employ such already existing resources. In order to maintain their own work, the 4C project has utilized various community building and outreach methods which help optimize engagement with developed resources in order to sustain its relevancy and accessibility. 4C’s outputs and deliverables are continuously being updated as more models are developed and tools are created. Their full Digital Curation Sustainability Model (discussed in further detail below), Sustainability and Benefits Restoration Plan, and other reports and developed resources are freely available on the project website (https://www.4cproject.eu/).
4C Project. (2013). The Digital Curation Sustainability Model. https://www.4cproject.eu/dcsm/
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Technical infrastructure, resource distribution
The 4C project’s Digital Curation Sustainability Model (DCSM) highlights key concepts, relationships, and decision points for digital sustainability through digital curation. In the words of the 4C project team, the DCSM “offers a generic template and a series of components to support discussions, analysis and planning for designing a sustainability strategy.” Ultimately, the goal of the model is to provide reference points and concepts that teams, organizations, and/or individuals can use to evaluate the activity of their project, so they can reflect on and change aspects of their project design as necessary.
Jules, Bergis. "Architecting Sustainable Futures: Exploring Funding Models in Community-Based Archives." Shift US (2019), https://shiftdesign.org/content/uploads/2019/02/ArchitectingSustainableFutures-2019-report.pdf
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Financial stability
The Architecting Sustainable Futures Symposium was hosted in 2019 by Shift Design Inc. and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation to find new ways to equip community archives with sustainable funding. Various organizations participated in the symposium, most of them community-based archives serving marginalized groups and communities. These included LGBTQIA+, indigenous, African American, and Latinx groups, as well as victims of police violence and incarceration. The symposium’s main objectives were (1) to better understand the scope, intent, and capacity of community archives, (2) to gain an understanding of current community archive funding models, (3) map the funding landscape, (4) identify opportunity to maintain and increase archive capacity, and (5) make recommendations for how community archives can receive funding. The findings and recommendation are available in the symposium’s full report linked above.
Maron, N. L, Pickle, S. (2014, June 18). Sustainability Implementation Toolkit: Developing an Institutional Strategy for Supporting Digital Humanities Resources (Report No. 22853). Ithaka S&R. https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/sustainability-implementation-toolkit/
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Financial stability, operation and maintenance, technical infrastructure, resource distribution
The Sustainability Implementation Toolkit helps administrators develop long-term plans for supporting the digital humanities on their campuses. The toolkit is separated into three sections: (1) assessing the landscape, which evaluates who on campus is working in the digital humanities and how, (2) identifying overlaps and gaps, which helps analyze already existing resources on campus which can be used for digital project, and (3) discussing and addressing institutional priorities, which helps provide tools for developing plans and meeting with project and campus stakeholders. Overall, the toolkit can be used to assist with better understanding digital humanities on campuses and communicating the importance of such projects to key stakeholders in order to maintain long-term sustainability for digital humanities projects.
Miller, A. (2019). Digital Project Preservation Plan: A Guide for Preserving Digital Humanities/Scholarship Projects. Available at
https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/handle/mtsu/5761
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Operation and maintenance, technical infrastructure
The Digital Project Preservation Plan is a freely accessible web resource designed to assist scholars in preserving their digital humanities projects. The plan is a working document centered on preservation infrastructure, which is to be created and agreed upon at the beginning of the project and referred back to and/or revised as the project progresses. As the title suggests, this plan focuses on the digital aspects of project development and preservation, such as the creation and maintenance of online platforms. PDF templates for different sections of the plan are available on the Digital Project Preservation website (http://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/xmlui/handle/mtsu/5761).
Rieger, Schonfeld, & Sweeney (2022). The Effectiveness and Durability of Digital Preservation and Curation Systems - ITHAKA report https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/the-effectiveness-and-durability-of-digital-preservation-and-curation-systems/
See in particular Appendix B, Sustainability Studies Bibliography
Sociotechnical Sustainability Roadmap and Sustaining MedArt Project Report:
Langmead, A., Quigley, A., Gunn, C., Hakimi, J., Decker, L. (2018). Sustaining MedArt: The Impact of Socio-Technical Factors on Digital Preservation Strategies (Report No. PR‐234292‐16). National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Preservation and Access. https://sites.haa.pitt.edu/sustainabilityroadmap/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/01/SustainingMedArt_FinalReport_Web.pdf
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Operation and maintenance, technical infrastructure
The Sustaining MedArt project looked at the sociotechnical history of the Images of Medieval Art and Architecture website (http://medart.pitt.edu) through the University of Pittsburgh. The goal was to analyze preservation and sustainability practices for the website in order to understand how user-facing, web-based digital humanities (DH) projects can maintain sustainability plans. This report documents the findings and outcomes of the project with regard to MedArt’s creation and persistence conditions and their digital preservation and sustainability plans. It also offers recommendations for other project managers who are working to sustain their own DH projects. The results of this project also led to the creation of the Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap (http://sustainingdh.net) which outlines a potential sustainability and digital preservation model for other web-based DH projects. STSR is discussed in more detail below.
The Visual Media Workshop, University of Pittsburgh. (2021, January). The Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap.
https://sites.haa.pitt.edu/sustainabilityroadmap/
KEY SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS: Financial stability, operation and maintenance, technical infrastructure, community participation
The Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap (STSR) is a workshop designed to help digital humanities teams make their projects more sustainable over time. The workshop is divided into three sections – project survey, staffing and technologies, and digital preservation plans – with three to five modules per section. The modules incorporate design thinking and collaborative learning to further discussions around social and technical sustainability, what processes can improve sustainability, and what unexpected occurrences might endanger project sustainability. STSR can be facilitated using one of the example module schedules on the website, or another way that team facilitators see fit. The full roadmap is designed to to be initially run at the project’s inception. Team members can then refer back to it regularly to discuss the vision, scope, and sustainability of the project. The goal of STSR is to leave team members with a greater awareness and more documentation of their project’s scope, people, technologies, and digital preservation areas in order to provide a holistic and long-term view of the project’s sustainability. (See Langmead et al., above, for project context)
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