0.11 Response to roger bagnall paper: integrating digital papyrology  (Page 8/10)

I expect by now the reader to be thinking: excellent, we can make the data sustainable. But by removing the link between data and interface we find in all existing digital projects, are we not also kicking away the ladder that allows people to get to our data? Even if the data, as we suggest, can be stored forever, cheap, it is useless if people cannot get to it. We are relying, rather heavily, on metadata to allow others to create interfaces into our data far into the future. This seems a big ask. Who will make these interfaces? Who will pay for making these interfaces?

I have two answers to these questions. The first, many of you may not like. I think there is a real role here for commercial providers. It seems to me very likely that people will pay to get good access to well-filtered data, and providers will invest in systems to give this access. Further, in many cases the providers may also hold high-value proprietary digital data that can be included in the same paid-for gateway, so enhancing the value of “free to all” data that the provider includes alongside the proprietary data. There is no conflict here with the open-to-all requirement of my second rule. The creative commons license prevents commercial providers from having exclusive access, and it prevents the provider (say) changing a few words of the original material and then claiming control of it. Indeed, I think we should welcome the prospect of the return of commercial agencies to our field. Over the last decades they have been one of the main drivers of innovation: think Chadwyck-Healey and OUP in the eighties and nineties, Brepols throughout, and Google now. They have much to contribute. Again, open to all means all. I am encouraged to see that this is already happening. A glance over the NINES and 18thConnect sites shows that many commercial publishers are already here.

The second answer you will like rather better. I think individual academics, and interested and committed individuals outside the academy, will make these interfaces, focusing on the areas of interest to them. In essence, these interfaces will be web portals, like so many already out there, only richer. The tools are already readily available (most of them) for making these portals—but we do not see them because the materials are locked in project silos. Alongside individuals, we can expect scholarly groups to make these interfaces, adding them to the websites they already maintain. Sometime soon, I’d like to see the New Chaucer Society website have a toolbar. From this you can nominate any line of any poem by Chaucer. Another click, and you can see a list of all the manuscripts that have this poem; a list of all the manuscript pages that have this line; links to all the images available on the web anywhere around the world of these pages; links to all the transcripts available on the web anywhere around the world of these lines on these pages; links to all the commentaries, glossaries, etc., available around the world for the words in these lines. Also: this should be completely dynamic; within seconds of a library in (say) Italy making available digital images of a Chaucer manuscript, the interface will discover those images through the metadata and include links to them. Furthermore, following the model of YouTube and Google and others: I should be able to drag that toolbar to my own browser, and go direct to the data anytime I like, from anywhere I want.