Interested in Collaborating with Us on a Project?
The Digital Scholarship Projects Team (DSPT) at W&M Libraries can help with transcription, website creation, and archiving projects.
We support the following platforms for each of these project types:
- Transcription: FromThePage
- Website Creation and Development: Wordpress, Static Websites
- Web Archiving: Archive-IT, Islandora, Webrecorder
For any other platforms or tools, the team can advise, but we do not guarantee support or training, especially if it is a proprietary tool or incompatible with university devices.
To get started collaborating with us:
- Complete the Project Inquiry Form
- After your project inquiry is submitted and reviewed by our team, you will receive an email setting up an initial consultation.
If you have questions about projects we can support, contact Rachel Hogan, Instruction and Research Librarian for the Arts and Digital Humanities
Criteria for Projects
The DSPT will collaborate on projects that meet the following criteria:
- Research conducted by a current or emeritus faculty member that is part of their official capacity at W&M (either through teaching or research), affiliated with ongoing university programs and initiatives, or linked to current W&M libraries collections/history
- Projects must be published open-access with no embargos; however, access can be limited to use while on the W&M campus
- Project content must comply with library and archival standards regarding metadata, copyright, and arrangement.
- Regarding copyright, any works incorporated into the project must be in the public domain, open access materials where adaptation is allowable, or have the permission of the copyright holder to publish the materials.
- Projects must be hosted on servers and platforms that are approved by William & Mary Campus IT
The team reserves the right to revise the criteria by which it evaluates projects.
Scope
While the DSPT provides support and resources, the team's role is limited to advising and facilitating the development, preservation, and organization of projects. Faculty are responsible for the overall management, completion, and maintenance of their projects. This includes ensuring that all materials in the project have written permission, that materials do not infringe copyright, and that the components of their project follow the ethical standards of their home disciplines.
Limitations
The team can provide consultations about a project up to 3 times before a signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is required. The MOU describes the project, outlines its goal(s), deliverables, the project expectations, including timeline, team roles and areas of responsibility, and the project limitations.
Once an MOU is signed, faculty are expected to have regular communication with the DSPT for continued support of their project. The team will adjust project timelines with notice; however, if there is no communication after 6 months, the team reserves the right to terminate the project or move completed work into a preserved format.
Once a project is launched, the faculty member must contact the DSPT within a year to discuss new updates or revisions.
Preservation
When desirable and within the scope of the DSPT charge, the team will endeavor to preserve projects. Not all projects can be preserved in their original form or with all existing functionalities, especially if created with proprietary software or in file formats that cannot be migrated easily. The team cannot guarantee interactive preservation functionality for projects in perpetuity, but it will endeavor to preserve data from the project to be repurposed in the future. The DSPT utilizes a combination of web archiving, digital forensics, and other digital preservation tools.
W&M Libraries will not preserve incomplete projects that are inaccessible to the public.
Sunsetting your project
Sunsetting is an inevitable part of the digital project lifecycle as technologies become obsolete, and stakeholders move on to new research projects. Sunsetting a project is a planned transition to phase out a project to make room for new research. If W&M Libraries is hosting a project, it reserves the right to determine when and how the project is eventually sunsetted . If the faculty lead or another person designated as a project contact cannot be reached at that time, the team will attempt to deposit the project in an appropriate format in a digital repository (W&M Institutional Repository or W&M Digital Collections). We cannot guarantee long-term preservation.