Maintaining Indefinitely

If your project has expectations for continuous cycles of “active creation” and/or a high-volume, consistent audience over time, you can proactively plan for long-term maintenance of the most important aspects.

Migrating significant components

Description: Moving the project’s most significant components (such as images, data, or other media) from the custom project platform and into an institutionally-supported platform. All platforms require significant labor to maintain over time, but leveraging a platform that hosts multiple projects and has a dedicated service model – as opposed to maintaining multiple, single, custom platforms – is a more sustainable use of resources and ensures a less precarious support over time.

Characteristics of project candidates

  • Projects with media components that are the most significant element of the project, as opposed to the usability or experience of the project site
  • Significant properties of the project that need to be maintained are reasonably transferable to a new platform, such as embedded media and not custom code or high-compute elements
  • Components are already in (or could be deposited in) a Harvard repository – such as DASH, Dataverse, or the Digital Repository Service – so they can be easily migrated and integrated into the new access site, such as CURIOSity

Socio-technical considerations

  • Project team should carefully consider the custom significant properties of their project that inspired them to create a custom digital project and determine/document what loss of functionality is acceptable in a migration to a more standardized platform (or whether the institutional platform would be able to incorporate some of the custom code and components to benefit other projects)
  • If this is a target solution for the project, ensure it is coupled with a sunsetting plan for the original project access point (such as a website) and a redirection to the new site

Example

Loeb Music Library Digital Scores and Libretti project – before and after migration

Develop a durability plan

Description: Maintaining the full and dynamic usability of a custom project for “booktime,” as in, as long as paper-based media exist on a shelf, indefinitely. This strategy is best for projects that either have or develop a broad and enduring audience or will continue to go through subsequent active creation phases over time. It requires planning, durable stewardship plans, and implementing resilient support mechanisms and investment (financial, labor, etc.) over time.

Characteristics of project candidates

  • Active creation cycles expected over time, whether to update/add data inputs, take advantage of new technologies, or other developments that are outside of the maintenance cycle
  • Active audience and usability of project, which is expected to be maintained over time
  • High-compute or complex projects that demonstrate technological innovations that are of interest to other projects
  • High internal and external investment and expectations, which can make it easier to find extended robust funding and staffing strategies

Socio-technical considerations

  • Build in a schedule to revisit for staffing and funding resources – get assurance up front for extended support or plan to revisit and schedule that
  • The sky’s the limit for technical innovation and customization, but it must be well-documented to ensure it can be competently stewarded over decades, if that is the expectation
  • Consider vulnerable third-party integrations or components that are beyond the project team’s intellectual control, which could become volatile over time, and plan for how the project would address their loss

Example

Perseus project at Tufts University – https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

  • The Perseus Project began planning in the 1980s and has evolved over time and with the support of several funding sources.