Sustainability is a well-known issue in the digital humanities, but it is rarely discussed in print. Too many valuable online research tools struggle to secure the funding to remain available indefinitely. This paper examines strategies for ensuring the longevity of online digital resources, using The Zodiac Glossary as a case study. It offers guidance for digital project creators navigating current funding challenges.
Creating a unique, data-driven website for ancient-world projects is daunting. Grant-funded projects face special difficulties: provisioning server space can stretch across months, bumping against the project lifetime. Funding is temporary, and many research tools disappear after grants end.
There is no single solution. Researchers must make thoughtful decisions based on project needs, weighing costs, benefits, and available technologies. This paper aims to lay out the nature of the sustainability problem and offer strategies, using the Zodiac Glossary as a case study.
The Zodiac Project investigates the spread of zodiacal concepts from Mesopotamia across the ancient world. To support this, the team developed a database of zodiacal terms across languages. This glossary aids researchers from various disciplines.
Making the glossary public presents a sustainability challenge, common in digital humanities. Lessons learned are shared for the benefit of others.
Academic grants fund the creation of resources but not their maintenance. Printed works are maintained by their owners; websites require ongoing funding with no easy cost-recovery mechanism. As a result, online resources risk disappearing.
Charging users or institutions for access mirrors traditional publishing. However, it risks excluding users and is rarely viable for niche projects.
Free and stable, but often slow, outdated, and difficult to use for dynamic projects.
Services like Open Context offer permanent hosting for academic datasets but may not support full user interfaces.
Rarely feasible unless the project continues to produce new knowledge.
Theoretically sound but administratively complex for small projects.
Using static sites, pseudo-dynamic sites, or free-tier dynamic hosting can make projects sustainable indefinitely with minimal cost.
Sustainability remains a critical, unsolved issue for digital humanities projects. Careful design choices, leveraging available technologies, and a focus on longevity over novelty can help scholars build resources that outlast their original funding.