PARTHENOS Training - Sustainability

PARTHENOS-project.eu

Theme 3: Sustainability

ESU Leipzig, 2016

Dr Jennifer Edmond with Francesca Morselli

Trinity College Dublin


Foundational perspectives

Digital Libraries, focus on:Technical aspect of sustainabilityProject management and financial sustainabilityData interoperabilityData and Metadata sustainability plan

RI literature, focus depends on perspectiveFocus on Organisation or Business Model (Ithaka)Focus on Technical Infrastructure (DARIAH DE)Communication and branding (LAIRAH)


Defining Sustainability for CENDARICENDARI was a multi-partner Research Infrastructure project funded under the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme

New Paradigm:

Sustainability as a process rather than a stateGoal of sustainability is transformation and reuseFocus on reuse value within several asset classes

Outcome: a toolkit for the sustainability of the CENDARI project and its infrastructure based on recognition of the complexity of theproject results (not just the portal)

cendari.eu


Sustainability as Planning and Process within CENDARI

Foundational relationship with DARIAH (concretised in 2013 MOU): “DARIAH is your Sustainability Plan"

18 month -long sustainability planning exercise (stakeholders meeting in Jan. 2015)

Modular approach to sustainabilityComplexity and richness of the tacit knowledge held by the

project team


Recommendations on Process

- Start early and build sustainability in (4 points in time)

- Reuse wherever possible (knowledge, standards, data, code) and be open for reuse/handover

- Know your knowledge and share it well- Build in appropriate data management

planning - Think of a 3-5 year window, be ‘evolving and

involving’

Vicky Garnett

Clip art - good to use


The CENDARI assets

- Tangible Assets: data, archival research guides, publications

- Intangible Assets: processes, best practice, know how, communities

→ Categories of assets:- Technical Infrastructure: Portal, Services and Tools- Research Data: Unique and Aggregated- Publications and Knowledge: ARGs, Toolkits, Knowhow,

Management Data and Assets. - Communities: People, Networks and Relationships


The CENDARI Technical Infrastructure (Portal, Services, Tools)

- Portal: University of Gottingen (DARIAH-DE) for 3 years, following full audit of final state and exit plan in case of failure/removal of any key component

- Virtual Machine: Available as a full ‘CENDARI-in-a-box’ installation for reuse

- Tools and Services: Some with independent front doors, code available on GitHub to share software


Recommendations for the sustainability of the technical infrastructure

- Identify a partner (or a group of partners) responsible for the maintenance of basic services after the end of the project

- Have a realistic expectation for how long software will remain useful if not under active development

- Design the infrastructure in a way that the single elements can be reused and implemented by other research infrastructures

- Technical documentation of the tools and their integration should be openly available


CENDARI Data: Unique and Aggregated

The CENDARI “Data Soup” - Data aggregated from Institutions (API,

FTE, OAI PMH et al)!- CENDARI is not a digital library (BUT we

needed Libraries’ and Archives’ Trust)- Data created by CENDARI Researchers

(‘RWP’ protocol for ‘hidden’ collections)- Researcher notes and uploads in the NTE- Ontologies and other Linked Data

resources


Recommendations for the sustainability of Research Data

- As before: use standards and open formats, reuse previous work, and find a partner to continue development (DARIAH, PARTHENOS), document work

- Share unique data widely, with your users (eg ontologies) and collaborators (if possible!)

- Build robust social structures (eg documented use policies) to build trust

- Design a data ingestion cycle that is capable of being rolled out as an easily managed service at project close

- Be clear about what you have collected your data for, and what it’s value is (and for whom)


CENDARI Publications and Knowledge

- Publications (external support), Training material (project website), Management Data (internal support), etc. - not a problem

- CENDARI Archival Research Guides: COMPLEX OBJECTS: comprise text, images, annotated entities, links, available in 3 formats (NTE, RDFA-XML and edited PDF)

- Tacit Knowledge, including project failures: an asset most often lost at project close


Recommendations for the sustainability of project knowledge capital

- Ensure that research work can be accessed reliably (PI) in a variety of easy to find, relevant formats and locations (including TDR or traditional journal)

- Where publications challenge community norms, seek external validation for them (peer review, consultation)

- Build in a ‘Tacit Knowledge Audit’ process to the project and publish appropriately around this

- As before: connect directly for reuse (eg. DARIAH Teach)

- Ensure that management data, teaching resources, etc. are included in your data management plan


CENDARI’s Communities and Networks

Your reach may be bigger than you know...

- DARIAH and other RIs (PARTHENOS)

- Funded Project Partners- Scholarly Networks (IMC,

ISFWWS, COST 1005, etc.)- CHIs and their networks (APE

Foundation, Europeana, CERL, individual institutions)

- Social Media networks- Users

Pic from launch? From early PDMs?


Recommendations for the sustainability the user community

- Maintain a consistent central communication point, even after active project close

- Find a context or platform that fosters continued engagement and communications (DARIAH Working Group), and a small group of generalists willing to continue development toward a possible new phase

- Provide to the end users with simple instruments or forms to contact the project's team, to add content, report bugs and query usage of tools

Pic from launch? From early PDMs?


Question Time…www.parthenos-project.eu

Jennifer EdmondTrinity College Dublin

[email protected] www.tcd.ie

http://www.parthenos-project.eu/

Education

PARTHENOS Training - Sustainability