Beyond DM2E: towards sustainable digital services for humanities

research communities in Europe

Sally Chambers, DARIAH-EU

Göttingen Centre for Digital Humanities

DM2E Final Event

11 December 2014, Navacchio (Pisa), Italy

A vision for DARIAH

… to  enhance  and  support  

digitally-enabled research

across  the  arts and

humanities by offering  a 

portfolio of services and

activities  centred   around 

research communities …  

A vision for DM2E

… building the tools and communities to enable humanities researchers to work with manuscripts in the linked open web …  

A quick history of DARIAH

• 2006: DARIAH included in the ESFRI Roadmap

• 2008 – 2011: Preparatory Phase project, Preparing DARIAH

• 2011 – 2013: ‘Transition Phase’, establishing the DARIAH-ERIC, integrating national activities

• 2014+: DARIAH-ERIC  

15 DARIAH Founding Members

Founding Members

Austria

Belgium

Croatia

Cyprus

Denmark

France

Germany

Greece

Founding Members

Ireland

Italy

Luxembourg

Malta

Netherlands

Serbia

Slovenia

Candidate countries

Lithuania

Poland

Portugal

Spain

Switzerland

DARIAH European legal entity established:15 August 2014

DARIAH-EU High-Level Launch

Paris, 17 November 2014

Types of in-kind contribution

• Access • Expertise • Interoperability • Content Hosting • Tools and

Software • Event

• Training• Summer School • Cooperation • Educational Resources • Data • DARIAH Coordination • Others

Network of Contributions

Network of Services

Scholarly events

Open access archive

Academic blogging

Network of Services

Multilingual training materials

Digital Research Taxonomy

Summer Schools

Network of Services

Persistent Identification

AAI Infrastructure

Collaboration Tools

ArchaeologistsMedieval and modern historians

Holocaust researchers

Digital methodsDigital textual scholarship

Network of affiliated projects

Enabling humanities researchers to work with Manuscripts in the Lined Open Web

+

Affiliated projects

• Research projects within the humanities with digital methods as a key component

• Fixed-term funded projects, e.g. national or European funding

• Project outcomes could be building blocks for sustainable digital services?

Image source: http://www.freeimageslive.com/galleries/workplace/education/pics/stack

_of_blocks.jpg

Towards sustainable digital services

DARIAH Members Project outcomes+

Sustain + able

• Able to be sustained…• To sustain:– ‘To maintain, or keep in

existence …”

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sustainable

Towards sustainable digital services• What is the role of research infrastructures such as

DARIAH in sustaining the results of projects beyond their funding?

• How can DARIAH work together with fixed-term research projects within the humanities with digital methods as a key component?

• How can the results of fixed-term digital projects in the humanities be migrated to sustainable digital services for the European humanities research community?

Sustainability workshop

Workshop: “Sustaining CENDARI – Building DARIAH”,

21-22 January 2015• How key outputs of CENDARI provide value to the

DARIAH community in the medium to long term?• How can these outputs be preserved / developed

after the project funding ends?• What are the constraints for the future

sustainability?

Sustainability workshop

Workshop: “Sustaining CENDARI – Building DARIAH”,

21-22 January 2015• Participation of DARIAH affiliated projects including

DM2E• Key outcome: DARIAH white paper outlining

processes for the sustaining and sharing of the results of fixed-term projects within the context of DARIAH.

Towards a digital services sustainability model

• Seed: service is an idea and a blank canvas

• Germination: service is starting to take shape, but is little more than a proposal

• Seedling: early stage implementation – unlikely to survive

Image source: http://www.harvesttotable.com/wp-

content/uploads/2011/04/Germination1.jpg

Inspired by Ross Gardler, OSS Watch, Software Sustainability

Maturity Model: http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/ssmm

Towards a digital services sustainability model

• Juvenile: project starting to get a life of its own

• Flowering: service can function independently within a narrowly defined set of criteria

• Pollination: service and community are no longer controlled by the project owner

Image source: http://s0.uploads.im/GODm4.jpg

Towards a digital services sustainability model

• Fruiting: community is self-organising

• Ripening: service broken free from original project owners and can survive independently

• Dispersal: service is satisfying the needs of a diverse set of users and communities

Image source: http://kimberlysnyder.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/swredl11.jpg

DARIAH Working Groups: towards sustainable digital services

Goal: to lead services for the community that contribute to

the improvement of digitally-based humanities research

Image source: http://www.healthsciencescotland.com/cms/images/researchers.jpg

DARIAH Working Groups: towards sustainable digital services

Conceptualise: • proof of concept for the

working group• collect participants (more

than 1 country, target: 3 partners from 3 countries)

• define work plan

DARIAH Working Groups: towards sustainable digital services

Implementation:• integrate efforts of the different

participants• prepare operational phase• connect to user communities

Image source: http://money101.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Make-it-happen-1.jpg

DARIAH Working Groups: towards sustainable digital services

Service: • enable the provision of the

service• communicate• expand coverage• manage evolution

Image source: http://www.contegix.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Continuous-Improvement.jpg

Digital Humanities Course Registry: https://dariah.uni-koeln.de

DARIAH (VCC2) Working Group

Stef Scagliola (NL), Walter Scholger (AT), Zoe Schubert (DE),

Manfred Thaller (DE), …

Starting to flower…

Beyond DM2E?

Which outcomes of the DM2E could be developed into sustainable digital services for the European

humanities research communities?

Key outcomes of DM2E

• OmNom• DM2E Data Model• DM2E triple store• Pundit and Ask• Annotations• OpenGLAM network• …

Image source: http://ca-lectures.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/14-Results2.jpg

Beyond DM2E?

• How key outputs of DM2E provide value to the European digital arts and humanities community in the medium to long term?

• How can these outputs be preserved / developed after the project funding ends?

• What are the constraints for the future sustainability?

Image source: http://natureimgz.com/forest-green-landscape-free-

desktop-8-hd-wallpaper.html

From seedlings sustainable services grow?

Questions?

DARIAH-EU Coordination Officedariah-info@dariah.eu