The following sunsetting and sustainability pathways are designed to help your project team imagine what “end of life” for your project might look like, and to help you understand what socio-technical considerations you should incorporate into your project design to achieve that outcome. The examples and technical considerations are not meant to inhibit innovative technical approaches, but instead, to set realistic expectations about their sustainability.
“Ideally, the endpoint for a digital project will be stipulated at the outset in the project charter.” —“Digital humanities preservation: A conversation for developing sustainable digital project,” Transformative Digital Humanities (2020)
Using your Project Dossier – where you outlined your rationale, audience and usability expectations, technical components, and significant properties of your project – explore this list to find a sunsetting and/or sustainability pathway that is appropriate for your project. This is based on current scholarship as well as real examples at Harvard University, but it is not an exhaustive list and there may be other appropriate options, based on the discussions your team has while developing the Project Dossier.
Each option highlights:
- Brief description of the option
- Project characteristics that define a good candidate for the option
- Technical considerations that should be considered to target that option
- Example/s of what it looks like
Static maintenance for the medium-term
Many of the options can be used in tandem with one another. For example, your project team may desire to preserve the project for the long-term and therefore target a preservation strategy, decide on a sunsetting timeline, and prior to sunsetting, use a static maintenance strategy to avoid incurring maintenance labor and costs.