Keynote : Beyond DM2E: towards sustainable digital services for humanities research communities in Europe? (Sally Chambers – DARIAH-EU, Göttingen Centre for Digital Humanities) at Enabling humanities research in the Linked Open Web – DM2E final event (11 December 2014, Navacchio, Italy)

1. 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

2. 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 …

3. A vision for DM2E
… building the tools and
communities to enable
humanities researchers
to work with
manuscripts in the
linked open web …

4. 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

5. 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

6. DARIAH European legal entity
established:
15 August 2014

7. DARIAH-EU High-Level Launch
Paris, 17 November 2014

8. Types of in-kind contribution
• Access
• Expertise
• Interoperability
• Content Hosting
• Tools and
Software
• Event
• Training
• Summer School
• Cooperation
• Educational Resources
• Data
• DARIAH Coordination
• Others

9. Network of Contributions

10. Network of Services
Scholarly events
Open access archive
Academic blogging

11. Network of Services
Multilingual
training materials
Digital Research Taxonomy
Summer Schools

12. Network of Services
Persistent Identification
AAI Infrastructure
Collaboration Tools

13. Network of affiliated projects
Archaeologists
Medieval and modern historians
Holocaust researchers
Digital methods
Digital textual scholarship
+
Enabling humanities researchers to work with
Manuscripts in the Lined Open Web

14. 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

15. Towards sustainable digital services
DARIAH Members + Project outcomes

16. Sustain + able
• Able to be sustained…
• To sustain:
– ‘To maintain, or keep in
existence …”
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sustainable

17. 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?

18. 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?

19. 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.

20. Towards a digital services sustainability
model
Inspired by Ross Gardler, OSS Watch, Software Sustainability
Maturity Model: http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/ssmm
• 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. Starting to flower…
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), …

28. Beyond DM2E?
Which outcomes of the DM2E could be developed
into sustainable digital services for the European
humanities research communities?

29. 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

30. 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?

31. Image source:
http://natureimgz.com/forest-green-landscape-free-desktop-
8-hd-wallpaper.html
From seedlings
sustainable services
grow?

32. Questions?
DARIAH-EU Coordination Office
dariah-info@dariah.eu