We were pleased to bring Nancy Maron and her workshop Sustaining Digital Resources to Simon Fraser University in 2016.  Researchers appreciated her depth of expertise on the topic, and I appreciated her efforts to learn about local research projects and campus culture before she came.  This allowed her to customize the content of the workshop to meet our specific needs and amplified the value of her time with us.  Highly recommended.

                — Gwen Bird, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, Simon Fraser University

Nancy Maron brings two decades’ experience in publishing and institutional information services to this high-intensity workshop. We hammered out audiences, value propositions, and heterogeneous funding strategies to build a plan for sustainability in our digital collections.

                  — John W Maxwell, Director, Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing

This course is like doing a very topic-centric mini business degree where the subject is your digital project.    

                —Michael Zentner, Senior Research Scientist & Entrepreneur in Residence, Network for Computational Nanotechnology & The Foundry, and Team Assessment Leader for nanoHUB.org, Purdue University (participant, 2014 Ithaka course)

The course crystallized for me the importance of community-building to our project’s ongoing sustainability….we’ve now stepped up our outreach activities to encourage enthusiasm for and ownership of the project in advance of its launch.  

                —Sherri Berger, Product Manager, California Digital Library

The sustainability course offered a great opportunity for me to step back and think strategically about Rotunda’s products and business models within the context of a group of creative and experienced digital resource development professionals. The diversity of the projects represented, including content, discipline, technology, institutional home, and business model made the discussions extremely valuable.  

                —Mark Saunders, Director & Editor-in-Chief, Universtiy of Virginia Press (participant, 2014 Ithaka course)

Several colleagues at Indiana are working almost exclusively on digital projects, and I have told them that the skills/habits learned in this course, as well as the tools, will set them up to make the difficult but enormously important initial decisions about the scale, scope, character and even wisdom of embarking on a digital project.   

                —Julie Bobay, Co-Principal Investigator, Open Folklore Project, and Executive Associate Dean, Indiana University Bloomington Libraries (participant, 2014 Ithaka course)

Through carefully charted modules, didactic materials, and group exercises [the faculty] gave participants insightful prods that got us thinking about our resource’s core value, key constituents, and uncertainties. Thanks to the course, the ICAA’s Documents Project is well on its unique pathway to sustainability!  

                —María C. Gaztambide, Director, International Center for the Arts of the Americas Documents Project & Senior Research and Publications Associate, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (participant, 2014 Ithaka course)

As faculty members in the humanities, we are used to working with small budgets and being driven by our passion for the work that we do. But at the end of the day, digital humanities projects cannot sustain themselves over the long term as add-ons to full-time jobs, kept going through sheer will and late nights. This course was invaluable in helping me see new ways of approaching the work of the Medical Futures Lab that are consistent with our vision and our academic roots, but that reach further into the world of connected ideas that links universities with everything else on the internet. Now, I’m not worried about keeping the lights on anymore!  

                —Kirsten Ostherr, Professor of English, Rice University (participant, 2014 Ithaka course)

The course was the springboard that my team needed to help all of us—faculty, librarians, digital managers—take seriously the need for stewardship of the resources after they are created.  

                —Jaron Porciello, Digital Scholarship Services Coordinator, Cornell University (participant, 2014 Ithaka course)