0.3 Executive summary  (Page 4/4)

Implementation: A private foundation, a federal funding agency, an Internet business, and one or moreuniversity partners should cosponsor recurring annual summits to explore new models for commercial/nonprofit partnerships and todiscuss opportunities for the focused creation of digital resources with high educational value and high public impact.

4. cultivate leadership in support of cyberinfrastructure from within the humanities and social sciences.

Addressed to: Senior scholars; scholarly societies; university administrators; senior research librariansand research library organizations; academic publishing organizations; federal funding agencies; private foundations

Implementation: Increase federal and foundation funding to one or more scholarly organizations in thearea of humanities and social science computing so that they can work with member organizations of the American Council of LearnedSocieties (ACLS) and others to establish priorities for cyberinfrastructure development, raise awareness of research andpartnership opportunities among scholars, and coordinate the evolution of research products from basic to applied.

5. encourage digital scholarship.

Addressed to: Universities; research libraries; the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH); theNational Endowment for the Arts (NEA); the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS); the National Academies; the NationalArchives; major private foundations; major scholarly societies; individual leaders in the humanities and social sciences

Implementation: Federal funding agencies and private foundations should establish programs that addressworkforce issues in digital humanities and social sciences, from short-term workshops to postdoctoral and research fellowships tothe cultivation of appropriately trained computer professionals. The ACLS should lead its member organizations in developing uniformpolicies with respect to digital scholarship in tenure and promotion.

6. establish national centers to support scholarship that contributes to and exploits cyberinfrastructure.

Addressed to: Universities; Congress; state legislatures; public funding agencies; private foundations

Implementation: Universities should develop national and international fellowships at existing humanities andsocial science computing centers, and develop new centers with such programs, with a combination of university, federal, and privatefunding.

7. develop and maintain open standards and robust tools.

Addressed to: Funding agencies, public and private; scholars; librarians; curators; publishers;technologists

Implementation: University consortia such as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation should license theSourceForge software and make it available to open-source developers in academic institutions. The National Endowment for theHumanities (NEH), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)should support the development, maintenance, and coordination of community-based standards such as the Text Encoding Initiative,Encoded Archival Description, Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard, and Visual Resources Data Standards. The National ScienceFoundation (NSF), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the IMLS, and other funding agencies should support the development of tools forthe analysis of digital content.

8. create extensive and reusable digital collections.

Addressed to: The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), theInstitute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and other fundingagencies, both public and private; scholars; research libraries and librarians; university presses; commercial publishers

Implementation: National centers with a focuson particular methods or disciplines can organize a certain amount of scholar-driven digitization. Library organizations and librariesshould sponsor discipline-based focus groups to discuss priorities with respect to digitization. When priorities are established,these should be relayed to the organizers of annual meetings on commercial and nonprofit partnerships, and they should beconsidered in the distribution of grant funds by federal agencies and private foundations. Funding to support the maintenance andcoordination of standards will improve the reusability of digital collections. The NEA, NEH, and IMLS should work together to promotecollaboration and skills development—through conferences, workshops, and/or grant programs—for the creation, management,preservation, and presentation of reusable digital collections, objects, and products.

Finally, in light of these requirements and in order to realize the promise of cyberinfrastructure for researchand education, the Commission calls for specific investments—not just of money but also of leadership—from scholars and scholarlysocieties; librarians, archivists, and curators; university provosts and university presses; the commercial sector; government;and private foundations.