Absorbing DiRT: Tool Directories in the Digital Age

In the summer of 2017, Quinn Dombrowski, an IT staff member in UC Berkeley’s Research IT group, approached Geoffrey Rockwell about the possibility of merging the DiRT Directory with TAPoR, both popular tool discovery portals. Dombrowski could no longer offer the time commitment required to maintain the organizational structure of the volunteer-run tool directory (2018). This decommissioning of DiRT illustrates a set of problems in the digital humanities around tool directories and the tools within as academic contributions. Tool development, in general, is not considered sufficiently scholarly and often suffers from a lack of ongoing support (Ramsay & Rockwell, 2012). When tool discovery portals are no longer maintained due to a lack of ongoing funding, this leads to a loss of digital humanities knowledge and history. While volunteer-based directories require less outright funding, managing and motivating those volunteers to ensure that they remain actively involved in directory upkeep requires a vast amount work to ensure long-term sustainability (Dombrowski, 2018). This paper will explore the difficult history of tool discovery catalogues and portals and the steps being taken to save the DiRT Directory by integrating it into TAPoR. In particular, we will: – Provide a brief history of the attempts to catalogue tools for digital humanists starting with the first software catalogues, such as those circulated through societies, and ending with digital discovery portals, including DiRT Directory and TAPoR. – Discuss the challenges around the maintenance of discovery portals – Consider the design and metadata decisions made in the merging of DiRT Directory with TAPoR.