Module 8 is an introduction to issues related to digital sustainability and preservation. As there is a significant amount of reading in this module, you are not expected to do any technical activities (but optional technical activities are listed in case you’re really excited about this subject).

Readings/Discussion

1. read Trevor Owens, The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)

2. read James Smithies, et al, “Managing 100 Digital Humanities Projects: Digital Scholarship & Archiving in King’s Digital Lab,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 13, no. 1 (2019), http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/13/1/000411/000411.html.

3. look at Alison Langmead, et al, “The Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap”

4. look at the Digital Library Federation/National Digital Stewardship Alliance’s “Levels of Digital Preservation”

5. participate in the Slack discussion

6. OPTIONAL post-module activity: check out the Digital Library Federation’s annual forum (online for free due to pandemic) from November 9-13

Technical Activities

1. OPTIONAL explore wget which I use at RRCHNM to archive our past project websites. You can get a thorough grounding in using wget from the Programming Historian tutorials “Automated Downloading with Wget” and “Applied Archival Downloading with Wget.” You can also read a very brief (but specific to website archiving) post by Peter Keen: “Archiving Websites with Wget.”

NOTE: for anyone who hasn’t used the command line before (especially if your computer is running a Windows OS) you should check out the “Introduction to the Bash Command Line” tutorial before trying to do anything with wget.