The Alabama Digital Humanities Center is part of the University Libraries. We strive to support Digital Humanities scholarship and teaching on campus through web hosting, workshops, and one-on-one consultation. Our goal is to connect people and with resources so they can reach their potential as researchers, teachers, and students.
We sign Memorandums of Understanding with our project partners to validate our commitments and establish clear communication. Periodically, we will audit all of our Partner Projects and renew MOUs. We do this to maintain communication with all of our partners and reach out to make sure your needs are still being met.
All projects must undergo an approval process, and project owners must sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) before they are installed. All projects must also submit to project reviews at the ADHC’s request.
What We Do
We host digital scholarship projects for members of The University of Alabama community. Currently, the ADHC provides hosting for WordPress and Omeka S projects. Projects are supported with one-on-one consultations, skills development, and troubleshooting. The ADHC commits to hosting projects from development to launch and beyond for members of The University of Alabama DH Community.
What We Don’t Do
The ADHC does not build projects for researchers and does not engage with the content development. We do not host departmental websites, faculty websites, or non-academic special interest projects.
Project Sunsetting, Migration, and Abandonment
Projects are archived if the project shows signs of abandonment, including unresponsive project owners and failure to submit for review during MOU renewal. When project owners leave The University of Alabama, we will initiate a sunset protocol and archive your project. The ADHC can assist in migrating the project to a new hosting solution or providing project owners with an archived copy of their project for future installation and use. We maintain all of our archived projects, so if you find that your project was sunset and you would like to host it somewhere else, we’re happy to provide you with your archived project file!
ADHC Hosting Infrastructure
Projects are installed on one of the ADHC’s virtual servers are hosted at the central OIT data center. The datacenter includes 24X7 monitoring, redundant electrical, network, and cooling infrastructure. It will be hosted on a VMware Host Cluster and storage with be managed by a redundant SAN
ADHC Backup Protocol
ADHC servers have a rolling 15-days worth of snapshots available for backups. The snapshots are also duplicated to another datacenter that is at an offsite location. Individual projects will also have independent weekly backups provided (this can be adjusted depending on need/ requirements of grants).
ADHC Server Management Protocols
ADHC servers are managed by the Library Technology Department. The Senior Linux Administrator will support the OS and Application layer of the service by performing required updates at the OS and application level and troubleshoot issues. Other technology staff will assist with website support as needed. The Office of Information Technology will also assist with server maintenance and support as required.