A major impediment to longevity of DH research is the obsolescence of platforms, software, and systems. Increasingly, DH practitioners are becoming aware of the risks of project endings [1] including the failure of tools or of websites in which data is contained. We all know of many funded projects that produced important primary materials which are then lost as funding ends, with the only outputs valued by the funders being publications. If we wish to safely preserve the primary materials, it is essential that research data is stored in a future-proof format incorporating appropriate metadata. As an example, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) has always stored up-to-date metadata in an XML file in the same directory as the item it describes. This has allowed individual items to be copied from the collection and returned to source communities, complete with cataloging information. This non-standard XML has now been superseded by a standards-based linked-data JSON-LD document called a Research-Object Crate (RO-Crate) [2]. In this paper, we describe how the Language Data Commons of Australia is developing tools to create, edit, and explore collections that are expressed in RO-Crate. These standard tools will enable a range of projects to adopt RO-Crate. They are accompanied by a set of Protocols for Implementing Long term Archival Repository Services: https://w3id.org/ldac/pilars.

[1] https://endings.uvic.ca/

[2] Soiland-Reyes S, Sefton P, Crosas M, Castro LJ, Coppens F, Fernández JM, et al. Packaging research artefacts with RO-Crate. Data Science. 2022 Jul 20;5(2):97–138.

At the moment, there is little consensus or consistency across research databases and collections nationally and internationally on if and how to record important metadata on agent records. This is a problem because a lack of common understanding and shared practices produces inconsistent logics and limits the interoperability of various platforms. In response to this situation, two of the major Australian humanities digital databases – AustLit, the Australian literature bibliographical database, and the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), the Australian historical/biographical database – are collaborating on a project that aims to align definitions – and the policies and procedures that underpin them – across a range of fields in agent records, including cultural heritage, religion and gender. While these three categories are important ones for both databases, they are currently approached quite differently by each, as well as by other Australian humanities databases. Moreover, aside from practical issues, a range of ethical questions are at stake here, such as how we handle gender, culture and religion in inclusive and respectful ways. In this paper we explore the current state of affairs and associated problems. We also share some of the key questions and considerations driving the project, focusing on the three categories identified above, and use examples from the AustLit and ADB databases. This is an important project for Australian digital humanities databases, with the potential to generate standardised definitions across HASS data throughout both the tertiary and GLAM sectors.