Constraints of the assignment

  1. The work had to be 1000 words long
  2. Should be written in 3rd person writing
  3. Personal views should have a academic backing, else should not be included.

Submitted work

Outputs of digital humanities projects are often lost to the challenges of technology choices. Technology plays a crucial role in the form of tools or programming languages we choose toanalyse, process, or present data, the platforms we choose to host the output, data formats, and the standards we choose to adopt. Technology decisions are typically sought just for the timeframe of the funded project cycle, making digital scholarship short-lived and the sustainability of the project an afterthought.

Sustainability lacks a globally defined standard, and must be tailored to each project. Edmond and Morselli (2020), highlight that it has to be looked from the lens of the project in terms of platform and tools, from the lens of the user as the ability to access, use, and reuse the scholarship. Sustainability is often understood based on the mental model of a book, which, once complete, is relatively stable, available, and discoverable (Edmond and Morselli, 2020). Digital scholarship platforms like Omeka S or WordPress necessitate continuous human effort for regular updates and maintenance, extending their stability beyond the initial project timeline.

Drucker (2021) raises an important question if the technology choice can represent the complex knowledge of a digital scholarship. Humanistic inquiry, rooted in the relation between a provocative artifact and a hermeneutic engagement, could simply not, ever, be reduced to the structure of XML or any other computationally disambiguated representation (Drucker 2021). The issue that remains is not simply, how do we work computationally, but instead, how do we expose the ideological stakes in pitting an approach to knowledge as a complex system against one that imagines it to be instrumental and deterministic? The cultural stakes of this question are very high—they include control over the authority to decide what constitutes legitimate knowledge. (Drucker 2021).

Design decisions are an extension of complexity. Drucker (2021) argues, “never wed intellectual content to a platform structure, as getting it out is a time-consuming and tedious process”. Drucker (2021) also highlights their experience with Drupal as a choice of framework, and how upgrades to the platform were making the entire project obsolete. Drucker (2021), concluded that migration to a simple HTML/CSS format with hardcoded links was a more sustainable decision. Design decisions should be thought through in short- and long-term timeframes and expectations of scale (Drucker 2021).

Longevity is another parameter of sustainability. Longevity is the ability to remain functional and accessible beyond the timeframe of the project (EndProj). Longevity and sustainability depend on complex relationships that are ephemeral, no matter how conscientiously considered at the outset (Drucker, 2021).

Drucker (2021) notes “to be wary of the reification of sustainability as a thing, one that is addressed through mechanistic and instrumental approaches”. Instead, we need to think of the work of digital humanities as radically incomplete, always ongoing (Drucker, 2021). Edmond and Morselli (2021) also highlight that “It is also important to look at sustainability as a process instead of a state”.

The Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) exists to gather, preserve and provide access to records of Lesbian lives and activities. Doing this also serves to uncover and document our herstory previously denied to us by patriarchal historians in the interests of the culture that they served. The existence of the Archives will thus enable current and future generations to analyse and reevaluate the Lesbian experience (LHAWeb). LHA is a non-academic digitized archive. The objects of the collections are crowdsourced from members of the lesbian community, containing images, videos, physical objects like t-shirts, cassettes etc. The funding for the archive is also crowdsourced from individual contributors of the LGBTQI+ community members. LHA employed Omeka S (Omeka S) as its digital scholarship platform to curate and present its assets. Users can access, use, and reuse artefacts through this portal. LHA started in the 1970s and the project has sustained for 50+ years, making it a compelling case study to understand the intersection of digital humanities, technology, and sustainability.

The project can be analysed in five categories based on the academic references chosen: data collection, digital platform, data formats and standards, and documentation. Firstly, the LHA’s reliance on crowdsourcing for both funding and content underscores the importance of community engagement and collaboration.Drucker (2021) highlights that the individual researcher should work within their means – technical, institutional, intellectual and financial.

Secondly, the use of Omeka-S, while productive in curating and accessing the scholarship, raises the question of complex representation of tangible and intangible assets, combined with tacit knowledge vs complex technological frameworks. Edmond and Morselli (2020) in their analysis of CENDARI project, highlighted the project definition of sustainability of being “optimized for reuse”. Drucker (2021), argues “that additional functionality or complications in infrastructure should only be added when the simpler solutions are exhausted”. Thirdly, is the intersection of data formats in the platform. Edmond and Morselli (2020), highlight the need to use known and accepted standards(TEI for scholarly editions or ISAD for archival material etc) and publish work in common platforms like GitHub for software or open repositories for reports.Drucker (2021) also highlights that decisions about the format have implications for sustainability that depend on larger cultural forces, market-driven decisions and industry standards.

Lastly, technical documentation of the tools and their integration should be openly available (Edmond and Morselli, 2020), highlighting the need to document and make available tacit knowledge and understanding for a sustainable project. Knowledge sharing across the project and beyond should be not just the norm, but a process projects actively consider and invest in. This should be implemented not just at the level of project heads, but across the cognate skill areas within and between projects, with communications people building relationships with other communications people, for example (Edmond and Morselli, 2020). Shifting the very conception of sustainability to an epistemological construct changes the outlook dramatically. Rather than approaching the sustainability of digital humanities from an instrumental perspective, we have to look at it from that of complexity (Drucker 2021). Technology and design decisions thus play a very crucial part in every decision of sustaining a digital scholarship.

References:

Edmond, Jennifer, and Francesca Morselli. 2020. “Sustainability of Digital Humanities Projects as a Publication and Documentation Challenge.” Journal of Documentation 76 (5): 1019–31. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd-12-2019-0232.
Drucker, Johanna. 2021. “Sustainability and Complexity: Knowledge and Authority in the Digital Humanities.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 36 (Supplement_2): ii86–94. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqab025.
“Omeka S.” n.d. https://omeka.org/s/. Accessed October 26, 2024.
“HuMetricsHSS.” n.d. https://humetricshss.org/. Accessed October 26, 2024.
“LHA.” n.d. https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org/. Accessed October 26, 2024.

Grading

Summary and Application of Research : 58 (14.50%)

How is it measured: Research position and specific area of focus are described, although without sufficient precision and/or depth/economy.

Feedback received: You choose two good pieces of research to start with, which should be complimentary, but don’t seem to be from your description, as you emphasise Drucker’s focus on representation, not sustainability. Similarly when you go to narrow in, you seem to take a couple of different concepts: the catch all of ‘design decisions’ and the very laudable but also indeterminate ’longevity.’ The latter of these could be something to probe, but it would have to be framed in terms of what longevity might mean (10 years? 20? 100?).

Summary and Analysis of Primary Source : 62 (15.50%)

How is it measured: Primary source is described described generally very well. Research analysis is well applied to the object chosen.

Feedback received: The LHA is introduced well both in terms of its goals and structure. Application of the research perspectives is good, but a little disconnected: where do the four points come from? Are they explicitly from one piece or the other, or your distillation of them? Connection between this structure and the analysis could be more explicit - for example, the first category you name is ‘data collection’, but you never use this same term in your discussion of it. Yes, your reader can figure this out, but they shouldn’t have to work to make the connections. Also, while your first two points connect well to the LHA and how it was constructed, your second two points simply seem to reiterate the research work as expressing important points. Be careful to keep the focus of the essay clear.

Argument and Conclusions : 58 (14.50%)

How is it measured: Shows good effort with regards to structure, but may have lapses. Conclusions show multiple signs of weakness, either too general, disconnected, personal or recommendation focussed.

Feedback received: Structure is generally good, though it could be more tightly integrated with the material presented. Introduction falls back onto generalisations, which both distances it from the rest of the essay and makes it easy to challenge. It would be better to be more focussed from the outset, and to cite a source where claims are being made. Conclusion makes good points, but lapses into an exhortation rather than analysis. For an assignment like this in particular, a more detached perspective would be more effective.

Style and Application of Conventions : 70 (17.50%)

How is it measured: Excellent, precise and sophisticated use of English. Citations and bibliography correct and clean.

Feedback received: Writing is generally very good and shows solid application of academic register, and the level of analysis shows great promise. Referencing clear and correct.

Feedback to Learner

Mark: 62. Great work, if you can learn to shift your focus a bit more to ground your analysis more firmly in the materials you present, you will easily be able to write in the distinction rage, the insight and basic skills are all there.