Has anyone had any success in Archiving Story Maps?

AngelaGibson

How do University site license coordinators handle student projects after they graduate? We have many students using ArcGIS Online and Story Maps as part of the thesis research, and we need to know if there is a standard practice for archiving their data and Story Maps after they graduate. 

oevans_storymaps

Hi Angela -- good question!

What do you mean or expect by the word "archived" in this context? Do the stories need to be deleted/taken down? I'd imagine many students would like to have their work remain online after graduation so they could easily link to story maps from resumes or show them at job interviews.

Story maps are dynamic, interactive products that lose their value if they are no longer available online in their original form. I would suggest trying to keep students' final project story maps active, if possible. If students' accounts need to be retired when they graduate their stories could be transferred to an administrator account in the university organization so they could remain active.

Some other ideas:

• Story Map Journals can be printed or exported to PDF, but of course all of the interactivity of a story map is lost when it's converted to a static format.
• Students could create narrated screencasts of a story map and the video could serve as a way to archive the story map.
• Datasets and maps that were used to publish maps for a story map can be saved as file sources like CSVs, MXDs, GDBs, SHPs, APRXs, etc.