The Best Laid Plans: Case Studies of the Loss of Four Early (1996-2003) Digital Humanities Websites

This study examines factors contributing to the loss of four grant funded, free use digital humanities websites funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities' Education Development and Demonstartion Program, 1996-2003: Decision Point! at Auburn University, Hawthorne in Salem at North Shore Community College (Danvers, MA), the New Deal Network at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (Hyde Park, NY), and River Web at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The evidence shows that website loss did not occur suuddenly. In all four cases, organizations that accepted program funds to create online materials ultimately failed to develop or continue procedures to manage them effectively. As the organizations or organizational divisions that developed these websites struggled to sustain them or indicated an unwillingness to do so any longer, their creator(s) asked a college, university, or research library to take responsibility for them, without success. Online materials became subject to increased risk of loss in both contexts in part due to rapid technological change,often expressed in accelerating software product update cycles, combined with a general lack of funding and personnel available for addressing it after the end of grant period. Several other elements also played parts in website loss however, often shaping the ways in which technological developments and financial circumstances did their damage. In three instances website creators discovered that common vicissitudes of organizational life, including revised objectives, changing tactics used to achieve them, and new administrative personnel compromised website sustainability. In two cases adminstrators' responsibility for risk management led them to remove legacy websites made obsolete by new technology. In one case research pursung technological innovation in the retrieval and management of large data sets contributed to the loss of a funded resource. Finally, simple, inexplicable failure also contributed to that website's demise. These four cases can provide a digital humanities community increasingly concerned about the sustainability of grant funded online materials with additional evidence of how technological change and financial shortfalls threaten these resources. In doing so, it can also show how more complex organizational dynamics often contribute to website loss.