Planning for the End from the Start: An Argument for Digital Stewardship, Long-Term Thinking and Alternative Capture Approaches for Digital Content

Abstract

Sustainability and continued access to digital cultural heritage, digital humanities content and research materials can be challenging. For any research project, available resources and dependencies set the limits for what is possible. In the digital environment, consideration of these limitations can tend to focus on the technological aspect. However, it is not just technology that ensures the success of a project or long-term access to digital content. Using the Three-Legged Stool Model for Digital Preservation (Kenney and McGovern in Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies for Long-term Problems, 2003 [38]) (and other relevant models) provides an important foundation to ensure that any digital cultural heritage or digital humanities project is approached holistically. In addition, digital stewardship (Lazorschak in The Signal, 2011 [44]) should also be considered as an essential building block for digital cultural heritage and the digital humanities. Historically, questions of sustainability and ongoing access are often brought to the fore only as funding streams near their end, or as research project champions retire. Sustainability of digital content has been a topic of debate for many years (Bodleian Libraries in Digital Humanities Archives for Research Materials, Oxford, [2], Cantara in Longterm Preservation of digital humanities in OCLC Systems and Services 22:38-42, 2006 [10]). In recent years, the importance of sustainability is being further recognised, with research funding bodies requiring plans for long-term preservation and access as a part of applications for project funding, such as requiring the inclusion of this information in DataManagement Plans (DMP) (UK Research and Innovation-Arts and Humanities Research Council in Research Funding Guide, 2019 [61]). The author advocates for creating specific technical information necessary for long-term preservation, as well as borrowing and adapting from other disciplines. While long-term preservation and access may have been considered from the outset, the author also argues that not enough is done to establish a digital stewardship framework approach. The Digital Preservation at Oxford and Cambridge (DPOC) project (2006-2018) (Digital Preservation at Oxford and Cambridge, 2016 [21]), provides the opportunity to look more holistically at how digitised and born-digital content is created, acquired, preserved and made available. At Cambridge University Library (CUL), a case study approach has been adopted, in order to better understand the needs of different ‘classes’ of digital content. Examples discussed include digitised fragments from the Taylor-Schechter Cairo Genizah Collection and the interactive data in theKymata Atlas, illustrating two very different challenges of stewarding digital content. Through the case study research, the author and colleagues have identified that digital cultural heritage and digital humanities projects often develop a website or online resource as a mechanism for providing access to digital content project outputs. If not adequate planned for, digital content is at risk of becoming inaccessible after a project ends. Migration of files and various web archiving approaches are examined as possible preservation techniques, as well as other digital capture and documentation approaches more commonly used in contemporary art, time-based media and multi-platform archiving domains (Langley et al. in Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA 2013, 2013 [43]). Considering how to preserve and provide access to digital content right from the beginning of a project is essential. Taking a holistic digital stewardship approach-while learning from the lessons of past projects and borrowing from similar disciplines-can assist in better preparing for the end of a digital cultural heritage or digital humanities project.