Portability and Digital Humanities
On December 31, 2020, some Adobe Flash variants stopped being supported and many browsers updated their Flash Drivers, making older versions of flash no longer work natively on their platforms. Some digital humanities projects, built on these Flash variants no longer work without additional intervention. It’s not the end of the world, but software obsolescence is something that we need to address.
One of the biggest issues in Digital Humanities is portability of the information. Projects can consist of hundreds of links to images, data, and applications any one of which can fail due to poor links, a unstable hosting provider, or simple updates to HTML or the discontinuation of entire platforms like flash. Portable information and systems can be moved from one platform or system to another with minimal effort and does not require recreating an entire resource or dataset from scratch because parts of it died.
Portable data is stored in an area you control or provides needed stability over the long term. This means your data files can be stored on your personal hosting platform, your institutional hosting platform, or, in the case of linked text or images, with an institution that you trust like your library or a museum. Does this mean you’ll never have to move your data? Unfortunately, no, but it does mean that your links will tend to be more stable, and you will be able to pull the content available into a different format. For long term storage, we recommend using a digital repository, like Epublications@marquette where you can put just the datafiles to have them backed up to our repository.
Portable data exists to help you shift things into different systems if necessary. Tools like Knight Lab’s storymaps are great for short term student projects or brief proof of concept. For projects that are grant funded or will form a key piece of your research, it’s smart to have your data portable or easily replicated.
There are a number of ways to ensure that your data is kept safe, from practices to tools.
1.) Keep your data in a portable format. This means keep any data in a spreadsheet and long text strings into documents as well so they’re easier to edit.
2.) Use tools that allow you to port your data to different services. TimelineJS by Knightlab, Leaflet Storymap on Github, Kumu.io, and anychart all offer the ability to import and export data.
3.) Think carefully about what images you want to use and where they are currently found. You’ll want to use images from reputable institutions and also link as closely to the original image as possible rather than to a general image. If you want to host the images, place them in an accessible and managed space like an omeka site.
4.) Document what you’ve used and why. This is good practice for scholarship in general and will help you find citations and locations in case things move. It also allows others to continue your work after you’ve completed this particular project. Document everything, including software choices to help both yourself and the future of your project. Documenting what you’ve learned is an important factor in Digital Humanities. It also means that if a particular software doesn’t do what you think, cost too much, or was not suitable for a project for any reason, your documentation will save you time in the future and help you make data choices in the future.
Have any questions, need any help? Contact the Digital Scholarship Lab at Marquette University Raynor Library.
