One of the biggest problems I have discovered while trudging through the world of oral history is that people do oral history projects, make a website, and then that website inevitably dies. This really sucks and is very annoying when it comes to researching. The reason for this is mostly because of funding issues. You get a chunk load of funding for one project and that is it. This (I believe) is due to us living in an extreme capitalist world, which pushes people to think in quick wins rather than long term projects. This is for example the reason that governments and business are hesitant to pursue environmentally friendly options, because it costs a lot of money and the returns will only be seen way down the line.
However, there was one super slow, relatively ridiculous, and extremely expensive project during the Cold War that has deliver a truly insane amount of returns and profit – the space race. The space race was really really expensive but the technology it produced we still use to this day. (This might be why idiot billionaires really want to go to space, but that is another discussion.) The point I want to make is that we need to start embracing slow scholarship because I believe that overtime the profits will be a lot better than a handful of dead links.
But I also know that slow scholarship costs money and people need money to eat so maybe this is not the perfect solution. What might work is intermittent scholarship. If we build systems of data storages, and networks that support intermittent scholarship we might be able to avoid “drive by collaborations” and “project websites”. The best option would be that we change the funding system, but that is very unlikely to happen so instead intermittent and slow scholarship systems might actually be our best bet. I imagine that these systems will support collaboration over longer periods of time and allow scholars to exchange “hunches” and thoughts more freely.