18.659 no long term without the cash

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 659.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Clare Callaghan <cm_2_at_mac.com> (110)
         Subject: Re: 18.657 no long term without the cash

   [2] From: "Dr. Allison Muri" <allison.muri_at_usask.ca> (37)
         Subject: Re: 18.657 no long term without the cash

   [3] From: "Dr. Allison Muri" <allison.muri_at_usask.ca> (13)
         Subject: Re: 18.649 no long term without cash: Technology
                 Source

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 10:25:45 +0000
         From: Clare Callaghan <cm_2_at_mac.com>
         Subject: Re: 18.657 no long term without the cash

Having just lost a job because there was inadequate planning on the
development of a digital resource, I am compelled to move beyond my usual
lurker status and respond to the comments below of Dennis Moser.

You're right, better to say upfront that the project has a limited
lifespan. However, no one wants to say that. And probably that is because
no one wants to imagine the day the funding might be gone. However,
especially with projects intended to be run on public funds (and
particularly now, when public funds are so tight) there is no permanence.
Administrations change, funding priorities change, so once a project is an
accepted part of the landscape and no longer "new," "innovative," or
"groundbreaking," the costs of the project are seen most readily.

Why don't project implementors anticipate the day the project will have to
be self-sustaining? My recent experience has shown that the people
responsible for establishing digital humanities projects are more concerned
with planning the development of the projects than the funding of them. It
is more amusing for most to plan content development than to write grant
requests. And, the implementors think, surely the projects will be adopted
by powerful political figures and get annual allocations, or by individual
academic departments and receive monies there, or by some other
well-connected organizations. After all, the implementors know how useful
the projects will be, so they assume permanent, long-term, dedicated
funding will simply manifest itself.

This is faulty optimism, this is poor planning, but it does not seem likely
to change until the expectations for digital projects change. Who wants to
submit a grant or budget request that says "I plan to build a digital
resource with a working life of five years"? Grantmakers will be unlikely
to provide money because they like projects with both long-term and
demonstrable outcomes. Academic departments will be leery of funding such
short-term projects--how will they ensure they keep the money once the
projects are over? Therefore, the project implementors will be unlikely to
plan specific life spans.

Willard's next post asks about our desires for digital projects. I'd like
to add to that: what are our expectations for digital projects? When we
make the choices he references, with what kind of expectations do we make them?

          Regards,
          Clare Callaghan
          cm_2_at_mac.com

> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 657.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
>
>
>
> Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 06:55:03 +0000
> From: Dennis Moser <aldus_at_angrek.com>
> >
>I find this message extremely disturbing, considering that TS was being
>hosted by state-supported "virtual" university. Yes, I understand that MVU
>is NOT a "state" university, but rather, it has operates with the good will
>of the State of Michigan. But that REALLY doesn't change the fact that they
>are pulling the plug on this resource.
>
>One of the distrubing aspects of this is the impermanence...did MVU PLAN
>for the long-term care and preservation of the digital resources that had
>been created and that they were hosting? Hard to believe that they did...I
>have seen far too many digitization projects moulder away as the bodies
>that implemented them failed to plan for their long-term support. Better to
>say up front that the project will go away after a certain date than to do
>something like this.
<SNIP>

>My $1.00 US (rates are up due to inflation!)
>
>Dennis Moser
>
>Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty
><willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 649.
>> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
>> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
>> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
>> Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
>>
>> Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 07:01:07 +0000
>> From: "James L. Morrison" <morrison_at_unc.edu>
>{SNIP}
>
>>The purpose of this note is to alert you that TS will no longer be
>>available on the Internet after March 31, 2005 unless MVU finds a sponsor
>>or sponsors willing to pay $4,800 annually to continue to host TS on their
>>servers or pay MVU for the content and the costs involved with moving that
>>content to their server. If you know of an individual or organization
>>willing to do this, please ask them to contact Kirby Milton (kmilton at
>>mivu dot org) immediately.
>>The copyright provisions of TS are that any article may be distributed
>>freely for educational purposes. If you have linked to a TS article from
>>your or from your organization's web site, I suggest that you acquire it
>>before March 31 and post it on your server.
>>Please forward this note to colleagues who may have linked to a TS article
>>on their websites.
>>Best.
>>Jim
>>----
>>James L. Morrison
>>Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, The Technology Source
>>http://ts.mivu.org
>>Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
>>http://www.innovateonline.info
>>Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership
>>UNC-Chapel Hill
>>http://horizon.unc.edu
>
>--
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>mailto:aldus_at_angrek.com
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>"That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief
>danger of the time"
>--John Stuart Mill (1806-73)
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 10:26:46 +0000
         From: "Dr. Allison Muri" <allison.muri_at_usask.ca>
         Subject: Re: 18.657 no long term without the cash

This is a pretty clear example of the dangers and pitfalls of giving your
data to companies that use proprietory databases, elaborate systems, and
authoritative language to ensnare content. As the message from James L.
Morrison suggested, I wrote to Kirby Milton to say there are much more
reasonably priced webhosting solutions available.

Kirby Milton wrote back to explain <snip>"The Technology Source is a a
sophisticated application that creates its Web page content on the fly from
a complex SQL 2000 enterprise clustered database. I know exactly what is
involved in hosting the journal as I managed the whole process of building
it, as well as managing our data center. It requires five servers, and a
portion of our redundant firewalls, load balancers, routers, switches, and
back up enterprise. there is also significant bandwidth associated with
hosting these archives. ...Everyone likes the journal as long as they can
access it for free. Sadly, there are real costs associated with the
continuance of the archives, and with no matching source of revenue we have
made a business decision to take it off line. "</snip>

Predominantly text-based articles, however, do not take up much bandwidth
at all. The structures being described here (5 servers, for example,
firewalls, load balancers, routers, switches, backup etc.) are required for
an entire organization or webhosting company not just a single journal.
Many companies that do webhosting roll these hardware costs into much
smaller hosting prices (the server I use, housed at the University of
Saskatchewan's Innovation Place, charges $9 per month for unlimited space,
ftp, multimple redunded OC3 carriers, web stats, web mail). $15 per month
allows you to host a site with MySQL database, phpMyAdmin, and php.

The point is that these latter systems, unlike Microsoft's expensive SQL
2000, are open source, freely available solutions to publishing with web
databases. Once your data or articles are put into a corporation's
architecture, you risk not "owning" your own stuff any more. Your text
seems to be held hostage in the software that displays it. Hopefully TS can
negotiate to get its own data returned as a database file.

I'm not sure why, in any event, TS even needs to house these articles in a
database. There are many other, and much better options to house this
journal affordably.

Dr. Allison Muri
Department of English
University of Saskatchewan
<http://headlesschicken.ca>http://headlesschicken.ca

--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 10:27:41 +0000
         From: "Dr. Allison Muri" <allison.muri_at_usask.ca>
         Subject: Re: 18.649 no long term without cash: Technology Source

What's perhaps most disturbing about this message is the clear conflict
between the editor's understanding of ownership of the content, and MVU's
understanding of it:

>The content rights will remain available for purchase after we backup
>and then remove the database content from our servers in early April."

versus:

>The copyright provisions of TS are that any article may be distributed
>freely for educational purposes.

---------------------------
Allison Muri
Department of English
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, SK
http://headlesschicken.ca
Received on Thu Mar 24 2005 - 05:48:00 EST