The Challenge, the Project, and the Politics: Lessons from Six Years of the UC CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive

The CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive is a Digital Humanities project to preserve images, stories, and media about the earthquakes of 2010/2011, for the purposes of commemoration, teaching, and research. CEISMIC helps facilitate understanding of the effects of major natural disasters on communities and cultural heritage, but such archives risk failure if they limit access, lack visibility, or fail to produce research outcomes. Drawing on the experience of creating CEISMIC, the authors explain that a free and open access federated archive, committed to underpinning research, repurposing material, creating new knowledge, and forging links with similar efforts internationally, has been the key to CEISMIC’s longevity. They also candidly assess reasons why the project has not realised its full potential in the years following the disaster.