Sometimes I get carried away in a comment and the comment becomes a post-disguised-as-a-comment. Then the comment is due for a promotion, herewith conferred.
For context, see this post and this comment.
My idea for archiving the Great VCU Bike Race Book was to use the Internet Archive’s “Archive-It” service. Something is a lot better than nothing, and I’m really very very happy for those PDFs in VCU’s scholarly repository. But I always wanted the web “book” to be a preserved website that could be encountered and experienced just the way it was when we called it a wrap at the end of the project. I had at least one or two conversations with a very friendly and helpful fellow named Jefferson (no, not that one–and hey, he’s now the director) at the Archive-It offices and had actually gotten some price-and-service quotes when I was called to the Tower of London on a spring Friday morning and beheaded. (Here’s your head; what’s your hurry?) Like the Green Knight, I was able to pick up my head and walk away, but unlike the Green Knight, I was not enchanted–rather the opposite–in fact so downcast that I couldn’t even bear to think about the GVCUBRB in any focused way for years afterward. Even now it’s tough. But do-able.
Anyway, if Jimmy Ghaphery had not been so honorable as to say “I told you I’d do it, Gardner, so I am going to do it,” there’s just be scraps and your archive today. Jimmy told me to feel free to come in and supply anything that was missing or needed changing, but I never had the heart to do it. Still don’t, yet.
All of that said, I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever tried to do, and a model that could be widely emulated but, so far as I know, has not been. And as the true saying goes, I had an astonishingly talented and enthusiastic team to assign to the project. Just looking over the course we did makes me wonder how in the world we were able to pull it all off. Of course I know very well how we were able to pull it all off. In 2015, when the project ran, I had a sympathetic and supportive Provost. I had interested and supportive collaborators among my fellow Vice Provosts, especially Dr. Cathy Howard, who was then Vice Provost for Community Engagement, and whose initial brainstorming sessions with me took my ideas to a much higher level. I had a budget. I knew some amazing people and was lucky to convince many of them to come along for the journey. Just the usual success story, the lightning that strikes just a few times during a lifetime.
Moral: make projects while the sun shines, when the lightning strikes, when the Spirit moves, when the muses come to haunt you. There’s always an axe nearby with your name on the blade (not the handle).
By Unknown author – http://gawain.ucalgary.ca, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=621711