With Chuck Henry's permission, here's the text of a grant proposal he (and
some others) recently submitted to Getty, involving an agenda strikingly
similar to our own. Since Chuck is part of this group, we can expect, I
think, that our discussions will continue to inform whatever happens in the
project outlined in this proposal, and vice versa.
John
--------------------------
American Cultural Heritage Initiatives:
A National Review
Background
Many of the ideas that inform the agendas of current projects and
initiatives relating to the cultural heritage can be traced to the
publication of the Research Agenda for Networked Cultural Heritage,
published by the Getty's Art History Information Program in 1996. The
report noted the urgency for establishing comprehensive standards for text,
image, moving image, and multimedia datasets; more reflective study of
conditions of scholarship and teaching to better plan for the conditions of
technology's integration in the disciplines; increased support for
institutional and social changes that are conducive to computer supported
arts and humanities; and referred to a digital library as a working concept
for uniting the technical efforts on behalf of the arts and humanities.
Following these thoughtful recommendations, initiatives, programs, and
projects were created in response to the increase in digital formats of our
cultural heritage and the pressing need to preserve and maintain access to
these datasets: digital objects of texts, images, moving images, sound, and
multimedia databases that constitute the burgeoning repository of the human
record. These initiatives have come to focus on a variety of related
issues, including intellectual property and copyright; technical standards;
best practices; community education and outreach; and resource management
broadly defined.
During the last several years, it is fair to say that the more prominent
initiatives, through their annual meetings, core membership, conferences,
newsletters, and public presentations, have reached tens of thousands of
people, generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant funding,
provided important guidance to hundreds of major research universities,
museums, and art agencies and scholarly societies, while directly or
indirectly contributing to a proliferation of essential digital assets. It
is also, however, unlikely that most of these projects and programs can be
sustained.
It is instructive to survey the projects that populated the Getty report
and were considered prominent in 1996. The Getty Art History and
Information Program no longer exists, nor does the Center for Electronic
Texts in the Humanities, perhaps the most important teaching venue of that
period; Perseus was commercialized to fund continued development. Some of
the then emerging projects at research universities, such as the Valley of
the Shadow; the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities;
Project Alexandria; and the Humanities Text Initiative, have flourished.
However, three coeval, independent projects -National Initiative for a
Networked Cultural Heritage, AMICO, and CIMI-are all threatened financially.
Failure of the independent initiatives, born of the energy and optimism
attending the rise of the Internet and the Web, would be consequential. The
erosion of good will, the evanescence of programmatic accomplishments, and
potential degradation of indifferently maintained data that such failure
would represent in part serves as the impetus for a national review.
It is important to understand how these circumstances came about, and as
important to articulate recommendations that better protect and advance the
agendas and evolving contributions of these organizations. Some factors
contributing to the financial stress and compromised sustainability of
these programs fall into three broad categories: difficulty in creating and
sustaining sound business models; a complex technical infrastructure; and
relationships with institutional initiatives as well as with each other.
Difficulties relating to business models:
* Competition for membership and annual dues among cultural heritage
programs, and with more established library, arts, and scholarly organizations
* Budget shortfalls and budget reductions at most institutions of higher
learning
* Sharp declines in philanthropic foundation payouts due to a sluggish
national economy
* Changes in sources and nature of public and private funding for digital
cultural heritage projects
* Relationship to public and to for-profit stakeholders-it is increasingly
difficult to conceptualize the sector as exclusively non-profit
* Many initiatives are constructed around one or two individuals, entailing
enormous workloads with an unclear path for succession
* Difficulty in defining and defending abstract products not easy to quantify
Complex technical infrastructure
* Difficulty in building consensus toward standards for technical solutions
* Diverse platforms within constituent communities
* Absence of a national forum to coordinate current and proposed activities
* Significant changes in the technical environment: while the internet and
computing has become more capacious and powerful, it can be argued that
these enhancements encourage fragmentation through individual empowerment
* A political environment substantively different from the mid-1990s when
technology was viewed more as a potential public good
Relationships with institutions and other initiatives
* Communication between these initiatives, and other projects involving
technology and scholarship, is difficult to sustain
* Overlapping agendas among the cultural heritage initiatives, as well as
with established organizations
* Communication between established library, scholarly, and arts
organizations could be improved
The Project
In light of the complexity of the current environment in which initiatives
supporting the digital cultural heritage are engaged, a project to
undertake a national review is timely.
The project would have two related phases: a survey of existing projects
and initiatives, and a follow-up review of those findings with extensive
interviews, leading to a series of recommendations that can be used as the
basis for considering the future direction of these initiatives. A
consultant will be hired to conduct the survey and write an initial report;
the consultant will continue to serve as Project Facilitator through the
second phase.
1. The Survey.
The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has generously
agreed to fund the Survey (Phase 1 of this project). A consultant will be
hired within the coming weeks, meet with members of the Steering Committee,
and undertake the survey immediately thereafter. In general terms, the
survey will explore the financing, organizational structure, and
sustainability of American-based digital cultural heritage
initiatives. The objectives of the survey are to determine, for various
digital cultural heritage initiatives, the following information:
-- Mission
-- Type (personal; membership; for-profit; not for profit; consortium)
-- Financial support/business plan
-- Contributions/products
-- Problems in sustainability
The project will be conducted over a two month period (currently projected
to be the second week of September through the second week of November),
with approximately 50 organizational initiatives surveyed.
The Steering Committee will take an active advisory role in the survey,
particularly in the beginning, when the parameters of the survey are to be
defined. The final report summarizing the survey results will be reviewed
by the Steering Committee (December 2002).
2. Review and Recommendations
The Steering Committee will structure interviews with the leadership of
about twelve key organizations, including those relating to the cultural
heritage and other established organizations and foundations, to achieve a
more in depth understanding of current issues and to gather ideas for a
future course of action. The Project Facilitator will interview six
organizations, with members of the Steering Committee also interviewing
about six (January-March 2003).
The Steering Committee will then reconvene in the spring to analyze the
survey data and the reports from the interviews, and then draft a summary
document with recommendations. This draft will be circulated to an advisory
group for comments and observations; a final draft will be produced by June
2003 that incorporates these comments from the field.
Timeline
Hiring of Consultant/Project Facilitator (August 2002)
Appointment of Steering Committee (August 2002)
Defining the Survey Parameters (August 2002)
In preparation for a meeting with the Steering Committee to discuss the
survey and the larger project of which it is a part, the Consultant will
identify a list of "talking points" for the meeting to help all parties
reach agreement on the survey goals and parameters.
Consultant/Steering Committee Meeting (September 2002)
The Consultant will meet with the Steering Committee in Washington, DC.
Development of Survey Instrument/Methodology (September 2002)
Following discussions with the Steering Committee, the Consultant will
develop a survey instrument and methodology to be used for collecting
information. This material will be distributed to the Steering Committee
for their comment prior to beginning the survey.
Survey (September-October 2002)
The Consultant will conduct the survey over a period of several weeks. The
Consultant may request assistance from the Steering Committee in
identifying appropriate contacts for various organizations.
Analysis and report writing (November 2002)
The Consultant will compile and analyze the information derived from the
survey, and write a report for that addresses the particular needs
articulated by the Steering Committee in the initial Consultant/Steering
Committee meeting.
Meeting of Steering Committee for Review of Survey Information (December 2002)
Meeting of Steering Committee or subset with Project Facilitator (January 2003)
Itinerary for interview schedules for Facilitator and subset of Steering
Committee members and articulation of interview questions and goals
Interviews with Selected Initiative and Organization leadership
(January-March 2003)
Compilation of interview materials and first draft of recommendations
(April 2003)
Review process by advisory group (April-May 2003)
Submission of final report and recommendations (June 2003)
Goals
This project is undertaken with shared assumptions pertaining to final
objectives;
a national review of cultural heritage initiatives should produce the
following:
* A succinct description of the genesis of selected organizations and their
original goals, and a brief history of their evolution
* A description of the ongoing financial circumstances of these initiatives
* Recommendations as to alternate structures or organizations that would
preserve the agendas of these initiatives while relieving the annual burden
of seeking dues for cost recovery in a competitive environment; this may
include:
a) A review of national initiatives that are truly international in scope
(Canadian Heritage Information Network; JISC's Arts and Humanities Research
Board; European Cultural Portal)
b) Exploring new partnerships and collaborations for the cultural heritage
initiatives, including merging with established organizations; becoming
part of academic initiatives; taking greater advantage of the numerous text
and media centers at universities; merging with digital library projects
c) Exploring collaboration with existing computing and humanities
organizations, such as ACH and ALLC, to foster a commonly held research agenda
d) Relationship to ACLS, SSRC and other major cross-sectoral organizations
* Recommendations for business plans that reflect the economy and political
landscape of the early 21st century
* Guidelines that would prevent future uncoordinated proliferation of
initiatives
* Technical solutions that would aggregate existing and future digital
assets and ensure their integrity and interoperability regardless of
organizational structures
Budget
Phase 1
Consultant Fee ($15,000)*
The fee for the Consultant's portion of the work outlined above is $15,000,
one third ($5000) to be paid after the completion the survey/methodology
description and the remaining two thirds ($10,000) to be paid after receipt
of the revised, final version of this document.
*These costs will be borne by the Council on Library and Information Resources
Steering Committee meetings @ $1500x 2 3,000.
Phase 2
Steering Committee meetings @$1500x 3 4,500
Project Facilitator Fee
Travel for Community Interviews 6@
$1000 6,000
Preparing materials and conducting interviews
Interviews/Meetings/Write reports 30 days @$700 = 21,000
Steering Committee Interviews @
6x$1,000 6,000
Materials and Supplies: 500
Communications: 1,000
TOTAL: $42,500
---------------------------
The Steering Committee
Stanley Katz
Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies
Princeton University
Deanna Marcum
Council on Library and Information Resources
Samuel Sachs
The Frick Collection
Bill Wulf
National Academy of Engineering
Pat Williams
Americans for the Arts
Charles Henry
Rice University
Marc Pachter
National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American History
Advisory Group
An advisory group of experts will be called upon to review the draft
findings and recommendations; among those participating in this review will be:
Cliff Lynch
Coalition for Networked Information
Steve Wheatley
American Council of Learned Societies
David Seaman
Digital Library Federation
Joyce Ray
Institute for Museum and Library Services
David Green
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage
Nancy Allen
Jim Michalko
Research Libraries Group
Ellen Lovell
Center for Arts and Culture
John Vaughn
American Association of Universities
Duane Webster
Association of Research Libraries
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