Christine Madsen
Chief Innovation Officer
Athenaeum21
Megan Hurst
Chief Experience Officer
Athenaeum21
The University of Oxford, like many universities, is facing difficult choices about how to sustain, preserve, and/or archive its hundreds of digital humanities (DH) projects that have reached the conclusion of their funding or support. Our in-depth analysis of the functional requirements of DH projects included extensive interviews with the creators of more than 30 projects. We have uncovered a more robust and detailed picture of how both active and retired DH projects differ from the most common research data management and preservation models, and of their unique technical sustainability and preservation issues. This presentation will describe our findings of the unique characteristics of DH projects that make them more challenging to preserve and sustain, as well as our proposed layered service model for a more sustainable digital humanities infrastructure.