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Academic and research libraries have made many efforts to diversify their workforces; however, today the profession remains largely homogenous. We recognize that diversification cannot be achieved without creating inclusive and more equitable workspaces and workplaces. This requires rethinking our assumptions and behaviors as individuals and as a profession, questioning entrenched structures that maintain the status quo, and developing practices that keep these critical questions in the forefront as we do the difficult work of redefining our infrastructure in order to create equitable and socially just workplaces. To inspire a different type of dialogue, we offer actionable information and tools – strategies, ideas, and concepts from outside our profession. In this chapter, the authors present strategies used by corporations, industries, organizations, or fields outside of academia that have contributed to substantially diversifying their workforces and discuss how they could be integrated into our own workplaces. While these efforts are imperfect, incomplete, or have mixed results, we focus on strategies that demonstrate outside-the-box thinking for our profession, practices that will require academic and research libraries to rethink their operations, the behaviors and structures that support them, and thus the way library management and leadership are practiced. We are hoping that providing strategies outside our profession, as well as guidance on applying these strategies, will create reflection, dialogue, and innovative ideas for our own institutions.

This paper proposes a new perspective on the enormous and unresolved challenge to existing practices of publication and documentation posed by the outputs of digital research projects in the humanities, where much good work is being lost due to resource or technical challenges.

The paper documents and analyses both the existing literature on promoting sustainability for the outputs of digital humanities projects and the innovative approach of a single large-scale project.

The findings of the research presented show that sustainability planning for large-scale research projects needs to consider data and technology but also community, communications and process knowledge simultaneously. In addition, it should focus not only on a project as a collection of tangible and intangible assets, but also on the potential user base for these assets and what these users consider valuable about them.

The conclusions of the paper have been formulated in the context of one specific project. As such, it may amplify the specificities of this project in its results.

An approach to project sustainability following the recommendations outlined in this paper would include a number of uncommon features, such as a longer development horizon, wider perspective on project results, and an audit of tacit and explicit knowledge.

These results can ultimately preserve public investment in projects.

This paper supplements more reductive models for project sustainability with a more holistic approach that others may learn from in mapping and sustaining user value for their projects for the medium to long terms.