Implementing a Consortium Model for Sustainability & Development of Large- Scale Dig. Humanities Proj

Cliff Lynch: Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us today and we will be getting started in about two minutes or so. Cliff Lynch: Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us, we’ll be getting started in about another minute or so. Cliff Lynch: Thanks for joining us today and we’ll be starting in about a half a minute. Cliff Lynch: All right, why don’t we go ahead and get started. Welcome, everybody, to the fall of 2020 CNI virtual member meeting. I’m delighted, you’re here with us today.

02:55 - Cliff Lynch: I’m Cliff Lynch, the director of CNN, I have just a couple quick things about the session mechanically. And before I introduce our speakers. Cliff Lynch: There is a chat stream and you’re welcome to introduce yourself and make comments as we go along. In Cliff Lynch: The chat screen, there is a q&a tool at the bottom of your screen, which you can be you, which you can use to put in questions at any time. Cliff Lynch: After our speakers have completed their presentation. Diane golden Burkhardt will be men, and she will moderate the Q AMP. A session at the end. Closed captioning is available. If you’d like to turn it on.

03:42 - Cliff Lynch: And I believe that that is all of the things that I wanted to mention. So let me just introduce our speakers and this topic a little bit. We have two speakers today with us from Emory University. Cliff Lynch: When Morris from the Cliff Lynch: Center for digital scholarship and Cliff Lynch: David Altus who is a emeritus faculty member Cliff Lynch: And I think it’s particularly great to see the digital scholarship center engaged in this because this is exactly the kind of thing that I think is so critical. Cliff Lynch: That digital scholarship centers can bring in terms of thinking about sustainability models and how to support and sustained effort now.

04:40 - Cliff Lynch: As a very quick introduction to the topic. What we have here is a fantastic resource this slave voyagers collection of data that has been painstakingly put together by a group of scholars Cliff Lynch: I believe it is received funding from various sources as part of the supportive its creation but like many of these critical community humanities resources. Cliff Lynch: It reaches a point where it needs a model to sustain it. And this is a challenge that you know humanistic key humanistic resources have encountered again and again and again digital scholarship Cliff Lynch: Lots of things have been tried with very mixed experience and what we are going to hear about today. Besides, I believe a bit about the resource itself is us slightly different strategy, which is still as Cliff Lynch: Wayne and David tell me very much work in progress, but may point us towards some very important pathways going forward. So let me welcome lane and David.

Thanks for joining us, and over to 06:06 - Wayne Morse: Make a cliff and thanks for letting us come and be part of CNI again today as Cliff was saying we’re going to talk about this model that we are Wayne Morse: Putting together the consortium model for slave wages, which is a tremendous resource, one of Wayne Morse: I think as far as our center is is is concerned, it’s very unique in several ways which we’re going to talk about a little bit later in the presentation. Wayne Morse: And I thought we talked about a little bit about the current environment for which is hosted some some history of the site and kind of where we are and David. David will provide that. And then we can jump into the Wayne Morse: The ideas that were really driving the consortium and then where we are and some of the factors there. See if we can get going. Wayne Morse: So a little bit about where it’s currently being Wayne Morse: Hosted in the in the partnerships are with the Emory Center for Digital resources, we are Wayne Morse: 13 FTS and about 35 about 25 excuse me graduate students with expertise, ranging from GIS to vision to data analysis to text analysis to documentary filmmaking to XR Wayne Morse: So typical almost like a typical of of a lot of other digital scholarship centers. This is the snapshot of the work that our team has done over the past two years.

Pretty coded 07:45 - Wayne Morse: And you can see in the projects and media account we have multiple projects and that we partnered on, I would argue that slave wages is unique in many ways. Wayne Morse: And we’re going to go, as I said, we’ll go into those, but it’s really in some ways, it follows some of the basic Wayne Morse: Elements of many of the other projects, but in other ways. It’s very, very different and hence driving us to this new model, but let’s back up first and start with the history of the site and actually kind of its origins and where it came from. And with that I’ll turn it over to Dr Altus David Eltis: I can David Eltis: Much David Eltis: Very, very quickly. I THINK THIS STARTED BACK IN THE 50s when those discussion about the size of the slave trade and David Eltis: Curtain well known historian David Eltis: A tackle that subject and published a book in 1969 David Eltis: And David Eltis: I was David Eltis: A very young graduate student at the time. I wrote to this things, man.

08:56 - David Eltis: Asking about some of this data and well, lo and behold, he sent me 2313 IBM punch cards, which was the beginning of the in a sense digitize ation process. So, next. David Eltis: Very quickly, we found that slave trade was so vast, we had to expand our team and David Eltis: These were the original for scholars. OK. David Eltis: So the project. David Eltis: Got MAJOR FUNDING beginning of 1990s and the aim at that point was to produce a CD ROM. David Eltis: They were retailing at the time, for I think 1500 $2,000 each and David Eltis: By the time we had the collection in state i think the prices dropped 200 David Eltis: Which is what the CD ROM. So for that point we had 27,000 voyagers David Eltis: Something like 200 variables and the input already of scholars from around the Atlantic world and beyond.

10:20 - David Eltis: The response has been David Eltis: Tremendous in terms of people giving up their data to us. David Eltis: Okay. On Next, David Eltis: So, David Eltis: By the time the CD ROM came out, it was already obsolete, in a sense, because the internet was going. And we then switched to David Eltis: Building this first website and went live in December of 2008 at Emory. David Eltis: By that time, the boys counted gone up from 27,000 to 34,000 David Eltis: And it provided a number of features. David Eltis: Which help people analyze the data and was received pretty well. I think at the beginning.

11:19 - David Eltis: But of course, anything on the internet. David Eltis: Has to change or at dies and we’ve been spending the last 12 years really David Eltis: On the treadmill of funding. David Eltis: Not just for the content of course, but because of the technology which is continually okay David Eltis: A side product was Atlas of the slave trade, which we David Eltis: Were able to actually do things which you can’t get on the website. David Eltis: And it’s quite likely given what happens on the web. These days, that this might be the single lasting feature of the whole project because it’s clear that, from what I’ve seen.

12:09 - David Eltis: That hard copy David Eltis: Really has David Eltis: better prospects of survival and David Eltis: It’s hard to accept in our environment. But unless we get a sustainable. David Eltis: Model going. That’s the way it is. So this book may well have more importance than it would seem at first sight. Okay. David Eltis: So one of the things we had to do, of course, Rico, the whole site. David Eltis: But in doing that. It quickly became apparent that we could add other features. David Eltis: Especially the time lapse, which is indicated in the bottom right, but also David Eltis: several videos which one of which has proved enormously successful think it comes up to 150,000 views or there abouts David Eltis: And we are in fact David Eltis: Expanding that concept by building a new and I think David Eltis: more compelling video which we hope to have ready by next year.

13:23 - David Eltis: So this point, we’re up to 36,000 voyages and 74 variables, which makes a great deal of complexity. David Eltis: Only 74 of the variables are actually shown on the site. But of course the site office. David Eltis: It’s open access and it offers download capabilities. David Eltis: For all the data. And one of the interesting things is the extent to which is asking us David Eltis: Okay, when you should take over. I think Wayne Morse: It’s great. Thank you, sir. Wayne Morse: As David was just mentioning.

One of the unique, even though that the the site aligns with our centers. Wayne Morse: Mission a public scholarship. It is unique in the fact that it does. Again, as David said, allow for the data to be download, which is similar to many other projects but Wayne Morse: It does have the capability to manipulate and analyze the data build into the site itself in the sheer amount of data and the number of ways that you can look at it. Wayne Morse: Really makes this unique for as far as our portfolio. And I would argue, as far as as almost any other digital digital humanities project of scale.

14:39 - David Eltis: Avenue, but I should I forgot to add that another which we are adding data continually Wayne Morse: Yes. And it’s and it’s that’s just another one of the factors that go into it largely Wayne Morse: I believe a lot of the user data is returning within the K 12 world where people may not have either the proficiency, or the opportunity to download our or air and and know how to how to how to manipulate it or SAS or SPSS, or any other type of Wayne Morse: Page. So there’s some, there’s some barriers to that, that the site breakthrough and it’s critical, we feel it’s critical to maintain that functionality. Wayne Morse: Because a is so highly used and be it’s so unique and draws in some non traditional scholars, which I don’t believe otherwise would be able to interact with the data. Wayne Morse: Building on some other unique factors we talked already about the web interface, the size of the data given the subject matter and where it’s from.

15:40 - Wayne Morse: David and and his team felt that multi languages was critical. Wayne Morse: After the initial rollout because of the of the large population of enslaved people from different worlds and the people wanted to do research on those. So that was that was made a priority. Wayne Morse: Which is not similar to many of our other projects as David also mentioned there’s continuing scholarship happening. Wayne Morse: And that’s not unique again to our other projects, but the sheer scale and size of this one. Wayne Morse: introduces some some some unique complexities, which we haven’t had to had to handle and also as far as we’ve been going with this particular project at Emory.

We’ve had some key leadership position changes are we had a new Provost and the provost left. We’re now. Wayne Morse: Hiring a new Provost, we have a new president in place and the Provost Office has been one of the major supporters of this. In addition to the College of language of Arts and Sciences. So we had to navigate that as well. Wayne Morse: So the site as was until just recently on on premise. Wayne Morse: And they some of the things that we had to incorporate into that.

17:00 - Wayne Morse: Architecture, if you will, was is organic growth David and his team again of scholars are getting granting opportunities to add the visualizations. Wayne Morse: Updating the timelines adding new data, bringing in large data sets. So this is continual Wayne Morse: And again, that’s not unlike other projects. It’s just different. Because of the size of this one. Wayne Morse: The code is everyone knows who’s out there trying to make these things continue and do the care and feeding for projects like this in the humanities and probably other Wayne Morse: Other areas the evolution of code and marches on. You have to keep up with it. We have critical partnerships to make that happen within Wayne Morse: Within our library and within our IT organizations. Just, just for the for the operation of the site.

There are some unique network demands, because it doesn’t traditionally follow some, some of the other 17:55 - Wayne Morse: Rises and falls of demands because of K 12 and because of the worldwide visibility of this site and use of this site so that introduced some interesting Wayne Morse: twists and turns for our, our for our on premise installation. Wayne Morse: And also making sure the scholars have access, and given that the scholars are distributed all over the globe, make sure that they have VPN, they can get in, they can make updates to the data they can get through firewalls. Wayne Morse: We have pages designed that they can do updates and we can go and they can add that to the sites. Wayne Morse: So that was all another piece of our on on premise installation, as well as, as far as, as I’m concerned, and managing a digital scholarship center. Wayne Morse: There was a rather substantial piece of our overall resources dedicated to this.

18:44 - Wayne Morse: And I would argue, rightly so. But still, when you go to look at the breadth and how many new projects you can bring on and what all you can do. Wayne Morse: You’ve already have a lot of your resources dedicated towards this immense, you know, important project. So that brings you you know dials down the amount of resources you can you can apply to other to other initiatives. Wayne Morse: There are multiple collaborators and contribute is to this as David mentioned and showed in some of the history of the site historians and scholars from all around the globe continue to take part in this.

19:18 - Wayne Morse: We have code developers sets of developers, both here, the United States at Emory and Atlanta and also in Brazil, that have been part of the project from almost from the get go. Wayne Morse: But at least many, many years we have ui, ui UX specialist both add here and in Brazil. Now systems engineers that we share with central it and that we also have as part of our staff. Wayne Morse: And the data management, our partnership with them the data. The data management librarians and other pieces of the library for metadata and and such have been critical to so there’s lots of moving parts.

19:55 - Wayne Morse: Again, I would say, not unlike other projects, but because of the sheer size of this and the complexity, I would argue that these are unique to this project. Wayne Morse: We mentioned funding and some of the challenges that are there, and probably going to be continuing I think right David, I think for these Wayne Morse: To get to get funding Dave and his team have been have been hard at work to get a wonderful support. Wayne Morse: From the NIH and others, as you can see here on on some of them are listed on this page in order to maintain so that me doesn’t have to carry not only the burden of making sure the site runs, but also adding to it and updating it so these this they these these amount of Wayne Morse: Partners on on the financial side is critical to making that continue we would argue Wayne Morse: So we come to the consortium idea. Wayne Morse: The idea of having members, making sure that it’s that it’s broader than just a handful of folks. Wayne Morse: Move from a project team to a full governance structure.

And by that I mean 21:05 - Wayne Morse: As David again started to talk about or talked about the history, a small group of researchers doing wonderful work and then it grows and grows organically and then it becomes something that really needs to be sustained and and have a full governance structure. Wayne Morse: We have to have allow external funding opportunities to have happen so that the members of the consortium can can can help support. Wayne Morse: We have to come up with some type of idea around sustainable hosting and we have to operationalize the whole site. So, and it’s not quite operational, I would argue, like in the PeopleSoft sense Wayne Morse: But it is more than just Wayne Morse: Kind of organic grown digital scholarship project. It really has to have some more structure than that for it to be able to succeed with this new model.

21:57 - Wayne Morse: So here’s a little more detail about the components of some of the components. Wayne Morse: Right now as it stands, because it is as clip said it is, it’s still in process we’re looking at three years of membership and we’re also asking for dues to be collected Wayne Morse: In exchange, if the members can have a say in what happens with the sites and with the site and help and help direct its development. Wayne Morse: We are asking to have a single host of the site and for a six year period because of some of the, you know, challenges with moving that large site from one place to another. Wayne Morse: The host would have the responsibility to maintain and make sure that the site is up and running that there’s data analytical data captured about the site. Wayne Morse: And that it maintains an open access to buy a environment to make sure that it continue on the path that it’s that it’s been put Wayne Morse: And in addition, the host institution would, would they would waive their fees for that while there are the host because of the costs involved in maintaining it.

23:06 - Wayne Morse: But they would also receive some funding from the, from the institutional dues to pay for the care and feeding wherever that is. And also, they’d be able to have soft fundings the individual institution members will be able to write grants and still bring them in. Wayne Morse: As long as it goes through the government structure to be added to the site. Wayne Morse: So some of our challenges so far at least that I feel I’m not going to speak for David, but some of the challenges that I feel Wayne Morse: Are around this, the movement from like a primary scholar or a primary scholarship team to a larger team of scholars and really putting some of these Wayne Morse: Operational and organizational structures in place and it is really a change management process, I would argue, and one that really Wayne Morse: As far as I have observed. And again, I’m not one of the scholars, but I’m there watching everything move ahead. It’s moving it forward and incremental steps.

24:04 - Wayne Morse: But it’s not just where you can flip the switch and all of a sudden, it turns into what its future self is going to be Wayne Morse: There are considerations for various types of institutions to join, not just higher edge head institutions, perhaps some some some some museums or others. Wayne Morse: And we were talking before we we started the presentation today that we can’t divulge the names of folks who are already on on board. Wayne Morse: But so stay tuned. After hopefully after the first of the year, we can we can give you all an update on that. And we’ve decided to push for a cloud based hosting model one that allows Wayne Morse: The site itself, not to be moved from from from different platform to different platform or different hosting environment to different hosting environment. Wayne Morse: As the host change and really hopefully leverage some of the cloud based applications to do some of the things that we’re pulling down and taking cycles within the local hosts IT team.

25:05 - Wayne Morse: So there are continuing ones, you know, challenges about the upgrades and the updates and additions of new content and content types, but those are going to continue but hopefully the consortium and some of its Wayne Morse: Structures will allow for those processes to move ahead at a regular pace, rather than I’ve got a grant. Let’s put it in. And let’s hold off on everything else. And here’s another grant and let’s move that in Wayne Morse: So we’re hoping to do it in more of a structured type Wayne Morse: Way. Wayne Morse: So some of the successes. I see already Wayne Morse: Is we’ve been lucky and blessed to have continuing support from our university leadership. Wayne Morse: So through the whole process of us. And now we actually haven’t moved to the cloud and ready for its next step is that Wayne Morse: The dean of the college and the Provost Office have really stepped up and given us the funds to make that happen. And really, experiment with that.

26:00 - Wayne Morse: Which is part of the process. And trust me, we bumped her heads a couple times and we’re still bumping our heads. But that’s part of the process. Wayne Morse: We’ve really solidified our strong partnership with the General Counsel’s office and we again have been lucky to have a member of the General Counsel’s Office. Wayne Morse: Who, I would argue, and I said this to his face would think differently or thinks differently about Wayne Morse: What we do as far as being a digital scholarship center versus a lot of the other things he’s dealing with for the university. A lot of the other contracts. Wayne Morse: That he’s dealing with and he’s been wonderful and open minded and I think has really helped.

Don’t you think David help us get get that formed 26:41 - Wayne Morse: The flexibility is being introduced into the model, which I think is a huge success to allow other, as I mentioned, other types of institutions to join. Wayne Morse: So we’re not just looking for higher ed private higher ed. We’re looking for types, different than that. And I think those had to be incorporated into the initial mo you Wayne Morse: That’s being drafted as we speak. So that hasn’t made it. I would, I would argue, not easier, but a little more complex, but hopefully well well worth it. Wayne Morse: As I mentioned, as I just mentioned, we have an initial agreement, hopefully be signed by after the first of the year, if not sooner.

27:21 - Wayne Morse: And then we can we can release some of those some of those names and then we are hopefully going to continue to do Wayne Morse: To gather information on this model to see how it how it progresses and to see if we can share it with other Wayne Morse: With other institutions who are other organizations who have projects of similar size and scope. Wayne Morse: And again, as David mentioned earlier, we’re being we were still being able to do innovative forms of scholarship. While this is while this is ongoing. This is the 3D model. Wayne Morse: Of the first ship that we created, and David also mentioned there is the second one coming out, which is going to allow for us to do some more interesting and different things. Wayne Morse: But without the consortium model. I think things like this will be hard to come by to find funding for but hopefully that will help support these as we move forward again. Wayne Morse: So with that, I don’t know.

Dr elders, you have any other 28:21 - David Eltis: I did, I would just add David Eltis: Maybe, yeah, depending of this ultimately is usage and we do have David Eltis: currently running it about an average of 2300 visits a day. David Eltis: Without that would be nothing Wayne Morse: Alright, well thank you all. We appreciate it. And I’m Diane, I think we’re open for questions or comments. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Terrific. Thank you. Thank you. Wayne and thank you David for that really compelling overview of this amazing resource. I was just looking at it now during your talk and I tweeted out the the URL.

So I hope folks will take a look at at this really astonishing and incredibly important collection. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): So thank you again. Wayne and David and thank you to all of our attendees for joining us here at CNN eyes. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Meeting. We really appreciate your taking time out of your busy day to join us. And without further ado, let me get straight to a question that we have in the queue, which is what is the current technology supporting the consortium.

29:37 - Wayne Morse: So the current technology as, as we mentioned the Consortium has that has yet to be fully formed. But right now we have moved it from an on prem install to AWS. Wayne Morse: And it may well move from AWS to another cloud provider as the as the first a host institution of the consortium becomes identify and Wayne Morse: But right now it’s moved there. So we’ve been able to take right now advantage of a lot of the lot of the type of management systems that AWS allows as far as load balancing and search and things like that. Wayne Morse: And I think that just in itself has made a statement as to the importance of cloud hosting versus on prem.

30:25 - Wayne Morse: And hopefully it’ll move, you know, it’ll continue the I. The thought is for it to continue to be a cloud hosted service. Wayne Morse: And that that will allow for, you know, easier easier running of the system as we move ahead. Does that answer. I hope that answers the question. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Yeah, Robin. Let us know if if if you want more details on that and thank you for your question. And Robin says thank you Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): And others please chime in with any questions you may have about the Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): The resource itself or the consortium and I was just going to ask Wayne and David anybody who’s interested in becoming a member, what, what do you recommend that they do.

31:15 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Should they just reach out to you by email or zero. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Process. David Eltis: Don’t have David Eltis: That kind of formal process set up yet. I think it may be something that has to be left to the consortium. David Eltis: Basically, I guess we don’t want to tie hands at this point, but the whole the central concept is that the membership should be temporary and renewable and David Eltis: Okay, we’re going to have a consortium is going to be consortium is going to be looking for new members pretty well continually but at the moment, we have no formal process established Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): So that’s a, that’s a stay tuned for your update in the spring. David Eltis: Yes. Wayne Morse: Okay, yes. After, after a steering committee and operational committees. Get. Get that formed. Yeah. Terrific.

32:13 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): I was also curious to know you mentioned that one really important feature of the resource are is the data analytics tools that are built in said that those are really popular. Do you have a sense of what percentage of the visitors are actually making use of those tools. David Eltis: I don’t think we do. David Eltis: Something we should have David Eltis: I have to say that the David Eltis: I think they could be improved. David Eltis: We don’t make extensive use of inferential statistics, for example. David Eltis: And this is, but clearly the base for doing that.

32:58 - David Eltis: It’s there, and it would be I would expect one of the improvements that would be, we added Wayne Morse: Some data that that that we had on it a while ago and by a while. I mean, maybe a year or so ago. Wayne Morse: Shows at least half of the visitors who come to the site utilize that we can pull some recent data, but I just know that that’s that’s one of the that in there some other ones. Some other areas of visualization that get visited almost every time someone comes to the site. David Eltis: That’s amazing. Yeah, the video and the time lapse of popular I do you seen the time lapse feature, but that David Eltis: That that certainly attracts attention. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): You can imagine so.

33:41 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Well, that’s really, it’s really fascinating. Again, thank you so much for sharing this with us at CNI and we look forward to an update. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): And with that, I think I will propose closing out the public portion of this webinar and Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Any attendees that we have who have time and interest. We invite you to stay around if you’d like to approach the podium and have a chat with our presenters. If you have any questions, just raise your hand and I’ll be happy to unmute you.

So thank you again for joining us, we’ll have another 34:20 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Meeting webinar in about a half hour, and we hope to see you there. Take care everyone Wayne Morse: Thank you. David Eltis: Thank you very much. Thank you. .