DH as Data: Establishing Greater Access through Sustainability

This paper presents methodology and findings from a multi-case study exploring the use of preservation and sustainability measures to increase access to digital humanities (DH) content. Specifically, we seek to develop a workflow to both prepare DH content at Virginia Tech for preservation while enhancing the accessibility of the project. This work is based on the idea of treating DH as traditional data and applying data curation and digital preservation methods to DH content. Our outcomes are an evaluation of the process and output using qualitative methods, publicly accessible and described project components on two Virginia Tech projects, and a scalable workflow that can be applied to additional work. By breaking down individual projects into their respective components of content, code, metadata, and documentation and examining each component individually for opportunities in access and preservation, we can begin migrating our digital scholarship to a sustainable, portable, and accessible existence.