Since the summer of 2020, in a chain of unfortunate circumstances, the project group around WiTTFind, a search engine for the “Nachlass” (written heritage) of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, has broken up. Not much is left of the once diverse collaborative structure, leaving questions about the future of the data, applications and web presentation.

Several factors complicate this undertaking, including the problematic state of documentation, the heterogeneous code with many isolated solutions and the dependence on other institutions. All of this leads to difficult conditions for maintainability, let alone bringing started project parts to an end or even developing them further. There are, of course, many reasons for this situation. However, the most important of them is the organizational structure as an (almost) purely student project. Over the long project duration of more than 10 years, there were therefore quite a few project staff members. Some contributed to WiTTFind as part of their course work in one semester, a few stayed for years until they finished their studies.

Not only is it not possible for every research project to receive enough full paid positions to guarantee a secure project framework, but a project like this is also a unique and educational opportunity for the students involved to work on current interdisciplinary research. The fact that students are doing the project work does not devalue the project – the resulting tool has been and continues to be useful and important to the Wittgenstein scholarly community. In addition, WiTTFind research has multiple times been published in articles and presented at relevant conferences (e.g. Dhd conferences).

Relevant research was created that has a long-term right to exist – but questions arise about how to ensure that data from projects with a teaching focus are also handled sustainably.

The situation was exacerbated many times over by the fact that the project came to a sudden and unplanned end. Do research projects need to have a backup plan that can be called upon in an emergency to „save what can be saved“? Is the existence of such a plan, with all that it entails — from funding to time and effort — realistic?

In our talk we explain what the current situation of the project is and how it came about. But we also want to discuss what lessons can be learned from it, and what a future for WiTTFind could look like?