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Learning from our mistakes:

Using legacy projects to create better librarian/faculty collaborations

Slides; rough notes: https://tinyurl.com/paige3-dh2018

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Hello!

Paige Morgan

Digital Humanities & Scholarship Librarian

University of Miami Libraries

p.morgan@miami.edu

@paigecmorgan

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Image: Ruth Trego, 2017

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Image: Ruth Trego, 2017

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Digital scholarship can mean very different things to different groups of people.

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All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…”

internet’s

--William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII

“

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“Everything digital dies.

Everything on the web dies faster.”

--Robin Camille Davis, “Die Hard: The Impossible, Absolutely Essential Task of Saving the Web for Scholars,” Eastern New York ACRL Conference, May 23, 2016

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Legacy websites are a more complex challenge than “is it broken or not?”

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Incomplete data model for a bespoke site built ca. six years ago on a grant.

This site has a fantastically complex data model that makes it a poor fit for most off-the-shelf tools, or other platforms that the library can support, because it would require so much customization.

There are a lot of challenges. But let me tell you how we’re moving forward. Though there are projects spinning up to find better ways to preserve legacy sites, like Carnegie Mellon’s Digits project, and the workflow and tools that Karin Dalziel and folks at U Nebraska Lincoln have been working on, those don’t quite meet our needs. Partly it’s that they still require complex tech skill and infrastructure; and partly because I want our solution for this to shape the relationships we have with faculty and students, and be a bridge for them to understand sustainability better. To build on something that Hannah Alpert-Abrams said this morning, I want solutions that center relationships, not just technology.

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What might we aim for beyond static preservation?

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What does intertextuality between DH projects look like?

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Awareness that we’re creating data

🌇

Data packaged in portable formats (and shared?)

Project management workflows

Project charters / MoUs

Documentation for multiple audiences

Sunset plans

Goals for moving forward

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Thanks!

Hadassah St. Hubert, Ruth Trego, and Alok Amatya contributed to this ongoing project.

Any questions?

You can find me at @paigecmorgan and p.morgan@miami.edu

Thanks to SlidesCarnival for use of the Florizel template!