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Stockton College
The Literature Program
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Project Migration
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Starting around 2000, students enrolled in Introduction to Literary Research at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey studied selected texts, annotated them, and then placed them on the web. Our original server was no powerhouse and our original blogging software, manila, was infrequently updated. Together they were no match for the growing demands of the web, and in 2006 server and software suffered badly from relentless spam attacks. Accordingly, we invested in a new server and new blogging software (WPMU).
The new blogging software, however, did not allow us to invoke the OverLib javascripts that make our projects' annotations work. Thus a dilemma arose. We could not keep the old server running and open to the web (it was closed to all but the on-campus Stockton College community). In the summer of 2009 I took the time to migrate the projects from the old server to a new one. I used Firefox to save each project page, and it did a great job of saving pages with associated folders containing necessary javascripts, images, etc. Still, I had to edit the code for each page and rework links that pointed to the old server. It was a tedious process, but I hope worthwhile.
The migration of files on the web (and on our own computers) is absolutely crucial if we care to save early examples of electronic technology, but it's time consuming and an easy thing to overlook. Think of those eight tracks floating around your house. How are you going to play them now?
Tom Kinsella
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