Sustainable DH

"The Most [Undecipherable] Difficulties": Sustaining and Transcribing the Papers of the War Department

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 10:00:00 -0500

One of the most complicated websites RRCHNM has been sustaining in recent years is the Papers of the War Department (PWD), a crowdsourced transcription project to recover and make accessible the once-lost papers of the War Department whose offices burned to the ground in 1800. The project began with document collection and digitization efforts in the 1990s, but only became a website and an RRCHNM project two decades ago, in 2006.

Agents and APIs: Sustaining Projects by Rebuilding Them

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 10:00:00 -0500

RRCHNM has been in the business of producing digital history for over thirty years now, and because of this we have developed hundreds of projects on a variety of now-old web software and systems. Five years ago, when I joined RRCHNM, we decided to shift and consolidate our tech stack towards tools and software that would allow us a bit more creativity in the projects we were developing as well as provide easier ways to sustain projects over time. That resulted in a shift in our technical expertise, leading us to prefer the Python-based web framework Django or the static site generator Hugo for projects while reaching for WordPress, Drupal, and Omeka would be used sparingly.

Building Static Search

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 10:29:07 -0500

One of the nice features of a dynamic website—the kind of thing that’s often driven by databases—is the ability to run a search feature. Search is a feature across the various content management systems we use (or once used) at RRCHNM – Omeka, Drupal, and Wordpress. But once a site is flattened and no longer reliant on a database for serving content, the built-in ability of search goes away. For many of our sites, the loss of this feature can be dismaying to users. So, a goal this summer was to figure out a way to implement search on a static site.

Adding a Static Search to Former CMS Sites

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 09:24:34 -0500

As part of RRCHNM’s sustainability efforts, we are flattening websites built with content management systems (CMS). In this context, “flattening” refers to the conversion of dynamic, database-based websites to static, simplistic versions. A flat website is built only with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Flattening websites involves accepting different trade-offs. While the flattened versions save server space and reduce security threats, they lose dynamic features such as queries or user-input. A search function is a key site feature that is lost with flattening. A static site search remedies this.

About

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:20:56 -0500

This is a project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. Sustainability efforts at the center are currently led by:

Jessica Otis, Director of Public Projects, 2018-present
Nate Sleeter, Research Assistant Professor, 2021-present
Jason Heppler, Senior Developer-Scholar, 2021-present
Savannah Scott, Graduate Research Assistant, 2025-present
Tony Trinh, Systems Administrator, 2022-present
Misha Vinokur, Contractor, 2021-present

Recent alumni:

Megan Brett, Digital History Associate, 2019-2022
Laura Crossley, Graduate Research Assistant, 2019
Amanda French, Contractor, 2019-2020
God’s Will Katchoua, Systems Administrator, 2019-2022
Dana Meyer, Graduate Research Assistant, 2020
Kris Stinson, Graduate Research Assistant, 2020

Contact

Resources

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:20:48 -0500

Projects

CollectionBuilder – static digital exhibits

The Digital Documentation Project – resources on project documentation for sustainability

The Endings Project – resources on how to end a DH project

Learn-Static – teaching and learning resources on static sites

Project Resiliency – a special issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly

The Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap – assessing and documenting your project for sustainability

Books and Articles

Jessica Otis, “Managing the Digital Backlist: Sustaining, Preserving, and Deleting Old Projects,” The Dev Log (blog), March 13, 2023.

Reusable Protocols

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:18:34 -0500

Below you will find downloadable versions (most available in both .docx and .pdf) of RRCHNM’s sustainability protocols and documents, which can be reused as models in other contexts:

Sustainability Guide ( docx of Sustainability Guide / pdf of Sustainability Guide )
- high-level overview of what RRCHNM sustains and how it re-evaluates its sustained projects on a regular basis
Server Sustainability Policy (docx of Server Sustainability Policy / pdf of Server Sustainability Policy )
- the kinds of projects RRCHNM sustains on its servers and for how long
Minimum Hosting Requirements (docx of Minimum Hosting Requirements / pdf of Minimum Hosting Requirements )
- requirements for projects to be safely hosted on RRCHNM servers
General End of Project Workflow (docx of General End of Project Workflow / pdf of General End of Project Workflow )
- workflow guide to transition projects into sustainability mode at the end of active funding or when triaging recently ended projects
MARS Upload instructions (docx of MARS Upload instructions / pdf of MARS Upload instructions )
- how RRCHNM records information about projects and archives copies of project information in our institutional repository
MARS Upload instructions for podcasts (docx of MARS Upload instructions for podcasts / pdf of MARS Upload instructions for podcasts )
- how RRCHNM and R2 Studios records information and archives copies of podcast episodes and shows
Sample Tracking Sheet (xlsx of Sample Tracking Sheet )
- example of tracking sheet used when sustaining and doing an annual triage on multiple (dozens, hundreds) of projects

Translating Custom Themes In A Twinned Omeka Site

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 15:42:47 -0500

The Bracero History Archive was an early Omeka site built by RRCHNM. The project itself was a collaboration between multiple institutions. It brings together artifacts and oral histories from the Bracero program of the mid-twentieth century. In addition to being a significant digital history project in terms of collaboration, the official curriculum of the state of California requires students to learn about the Bracero Program and teachers frequently use this project for that purpose. This is a site that needs to stay live and functional.

Phasing Project Shutdown

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 15:40:37 -0500

As part of our sustainability efforts, we created the end of project workflow which we have shared on this site. How does that actually work when put into practice? In some cases, it has allowed us to wind down projects in stages – keeping core functionality and data accessible while removing high maintenance features – rather than leaving them up until a crisis demands triage or conservation efforts.

We used the workflow with two projects which serve as interesting examples of how to undertake this staged approach in practice. With Creating Local Linkages, we had to decide how to manage closing down the login-only area with a community of users. While we have written about Consolation Prize as a test case for end of project workflows for podcasts, the website for the show also presents some challenges, largely from the plugins which power the episode index page.

Monitoring And Managing A Collecting Project

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 15:39:07 -0500

One of the projects which came to the sustainability team was The September 11 Digital Archive. Although I (Megan) had not previously been officially involved with the project, I had been part of projects and conversations which touched on or included the site (specifically the Omeka Classic plugins for topic modeling). I also had some experience with other community collecting projects, including concerns over privacy and harmful language in relation to contributions.

Podcasts and Sustainability

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 15:37:51 -0500

In the spring of 2022, the podcast Consolation Prize was wrapping up its second and final season. As a member of both of the Sustainability and Consolation Prize teams, I (Megan) was tasked with initiating the end-of-project workflow for the show’s website. At the same time, RRCHNM’s other podcast, The Green Tunnel, was concluding its first season and R2 Studios – a podcasting studio at RRCHNM – was set to grow. These events combined to present an opportunity to create a sustainability plan for our podcasting efforts which would allow us to preserve materials proactively rather than triage five or ten years down the line.

Upgrading Antique Omeka Sites

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 15:06:37 -0500

Some of the older sites – orphaned and not – which we had to deal with fell into a category which can loosely be called “Antique Omeka sites”. These sites were created mostly before 2011, and ran versions of Omeka Classic from 0.8 through 1.2.

The challenge with these sites was that they could not be easily upgraded to current versions of Omeka Classic. As of 2022, sites running Omeka Classic 1.2.1 or higher can be upgraded straight to the latest version, but earlier versions of Omeka Classic need additional work because of changes in the database and file structures.

Search

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000