The Departed
Sometimes we clearly know a Digital Scholarship project has died. Search results yielding nothing but dead links, for example, or a project stub abandoned on the road years ago. More often than not, though, determining the death of a project is as hard as determining time of death for human beings. For example, is an online journal or blog dead if it stopped publishing new content a few years ago, but the original link still works and all the content is still there? What if a project stopped being maintained years ago, but all the original content is still up and running, and that content was never serial? Some projects are serialized, some never imagine an end, some projects were built as internally coherent and finite, others learned their finitude because they ran out of resources or labor, some projects are stillborn and never get off the ground, and so on.
The projects we select for this section go through due diligence to determine their vitality. When we can find them, we listen to the projects’ stewards. The case of ARC magazine is exemplary, since Holly Bynoe herself went through a process of public grief for the project, offering a moving eulogy at our TCDVI conference at Barnard College, “On the Digital Praxes of Letting Go.” Inclusion here does not necessarily mean the original content is gone forever. When we can, we include a link to the last archived copy of the project we could find. If you think we’ve made a mistake, please let us know.
Transitioning projects to this space, we hope, is a moment to reflect on the fragility and endurance of our digital scholarship—perhaps inspire new strategies for sustainability. Out of respect and love for the work we are doing, we have composed obituaries for each project. These obituaries use some of the language of the original, and some of the results of our forensics work. For each of these projects we offer flowers and give thanks.
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