In December 2018, the Internet Shakespeare Editions server failed. In April 2020, the Shakespeare Quartos Archive was withdrawn from its Bodleian host. In October 2023, the cyberattack on the British Library obliterated the English Short Title Catalogue, all the images in their digital collections (including those of the BL copies of Shakespeare’s plays), and hundreds of scholarly resources. These high-profile digital disasters are not isolated. About 80% of all the digital scholarly projects created in the last thirty years have vanished without a trace, leaving us with little to show for the public funding, expertise, and time that went into their making. Using the Internet Shakespeare Editions and its successor Linked Early Modern Drama Online as examples, this paper asks why digital projects have been so fragile, how we can better sustain them, and what we need to do to ensure their longevity.

Speaker:
Janelle Jenstad is Professor of English and Academic Director of the Humanities Computing and Media Centre at the University of Victoria (Canada). She is the founding director of The Map of Early Modern London and Linked Early Modern Drama Online, and the Co-Coordinating Editor of Digital Renaissance Editions, the New Internet Shakespeare Editions, and the MoEML Mayoral Shows anthology. She is a founding member of The Endings Project (endings.uvic.ca) and continues to advocate for Endings-Compliance in digital scholarship. She co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media (Routledge) and has published widely on book history, digital humanities, and early modern drama.