Thread by @wragge

Yesterday I suggested that #ozhist people should contribute to the 2021 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap Survey. But why? I thought a bit of background might be useful.

2021nriroadmap.dese.gov.au/get-involved/c…

Thread coming...

Warning: I have *strong feelings* about all of this & my take on it reflects my own interests & activities. So yes, I am very biased, and others will have different opinions, please keep that in mind...

There’s a bit of research infrastructure history in the preprint I shared recently, 'Digital revolutions: The limits and affordances of online collections’: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo…

You can find details of previous efforts to develop a research infrastructure roadmap here: dese.gov.au/national-resea…

There were no specific priorities for the humanities in the 2006 Roadmap, but it was suggested they would benefit from general ‘platforms for collaboration’.

These ‘platforms’ included things like data access and discovery, data storage, high performance computing etc. So very generic digital infrastructure.

The 2008 Roadmap gave humanities and the social sciences their own section – yay! A key part of humanities infrastructure was identified as ‘data creation and digitisation of research materials’. dese.gov.au/national-resea…

This entailed 'the conversion of key primary research analogue data to digital form’.

Access, discovery, and use of these new data sources would be also be supported, the Roadmap suggested, through a program of ‘data management and linkage’, including the development of new tools.

Also in 2008, @HumanitiesAU published a report 'Towards an Australian Humanities Digital Archive’. humanities.org.au/wp-content/upl…

This put the case for a coordinated program of digitisation, guided by research users & cultural orgs, but building a resource that would be open to all.

This is all just to underline the fact that it was recognised 13 years ago that digitisation of primary source materials provided critical infrastructure for researchers in the humanities. But has it received any national research infrastructure funding – nope.

On the ‘platforms’ side of things, organisations like ANDS & Nectar (now combined as @ARDC_AU) have developed humanities-focused programs, but the outcomes have been very mixed.

Meanwhile, @TroveAustralia, which is, *without doubt*, a key piece of national research infrastructure, has never received funding under these research infrastructure programs. Astronomers need telescopes, historians need Trove. But where do the $ go?

The broader problem here is that most GLAM organisations are not recognised as research organisations, so don’t have direct access to research infrastructure funding. Other countries have grant schemes that enable GLAM orgs to develop digital projects for researchers. We don’t.

Yes, the ARC LIEF & Linkage programs can provide funds for projects involving universities and GLAM orgs, but these are lead by the unis, and the GLAM orgs often end up carrying unexpected costs. Let the GLAM orgs lead!

By focusing on the importance of digitisation to research, we can also direct more attention to questions of what gets digitised and when. Understandably, a lot of digitisation $ go to ‘high use’ collections — typically used for family history.

How do these sorts of priorities affect the types of histories we write? How might investments under the national research infrastructure scheme help to balance or broaden our digital collections?

When it comes to funding the development of tools to help historians work with digital collections I am, of course, very biased.

**cough**
#GLAMWorkbench
**cough**

Suffice it to say that I think the focus should shift from the development of large platforms involving multiple partners, to supporting innovative, flexible, and responsive small-scale developments. But yeah, I would say that…

It will be interesting to see what develops out of the $8.9 million announced last year for the development of infrastructure for HASS and Indigenous researcher communities. ardc.edu.au/collaborations…

Fingers crossed...

Getting back to the main topic of this thread – research infrastructure is just as important to historians as particle physicists. It’s just that big bits of technology are easier to identify and throw $ at. This is why we should make our opinions heard through the NRI survey.

I think we should continue to emphasise the importance of digitisation to our research.

I think we should advocate for the recognition of GLAM orgs as equal partners in the development of humanities research infrastructure.

I think we should continue to highlight the diversity of humanities research, and argue for flexible tools that support this diversity. Bigger isn’t always better.

What do you think? Here’s the survey, let them know: 2021nriroadmap.dese.gov.au/get-involved/c…