sustainability redux

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 | mark tebeau

Following on Tom’s and Chris’s posts, sustainability has emerged as an important issue. Let me offer a couple quick words on the subject.

1) Sustainability demands not just funding but digital infrastructure, including both hardware resources and technical knowledge/competence.  How do we build and sustain technical competence in a university, institution, or community? How do we reward it, nurture and develop it? This includes developing such competence among faculty.

2) It seems to me that sustainability also demands collaboration between multiple partners. Within universities, this might mean between faculty and librarians, between faculty and technology/computing folks, developing technical services that support digital humanities (its great to see digital humanities centers here–I want to learn more.)  But, it also means collaborations across institutions and across universities. How can we build sustainable collaboration that advances multiple projects–and collaborations in which technology is embedded and integrated as part of the inquiry itself? And, how do we encourage meaningful scholarly collaboration, not just “advisory” boards?

2 Responses to “sustainability redux”

  1. Jo Paoletti Says:

    Beneath the grousing, I think my recent burnout experience was probably a case study in unsustainable innovation. After all these years, I feel as if I am continually building from the ground up, and not being able to connect what I am doing one semester with what happens the next. The result is an increasing workload that makes it harder to muster the extra energy required for creativity.

  2. Dan Cohen Says:

    I would be happy to discuss possible models for sustainability we have brewing for the Zotero project, and it would be great to get input from THATCampers about what is both 1) actually workable and 2) ethical/truly open source.