The International Higher Education

University Research Performance Forum 2013

9 April 2013 – Pan Pacific Orchard, SingaporeCase Study – 2.00pm – 2.45pm

Building Capacity for Future Research in a Digital Environment

Associate Professor Gavan McCarthyDirector, eScholarship Research Centre, University Library

The University of Melbourne

Case Study - Themes

Building capacity for future research in a digital environment

Sustaining research and knowledge transfer on digital platforms

Implementing strategies and policies for next-generation research infrastructures

Strengthening research support infrastructures for future development

Expanding capacity, Accelerating research performance and

Pursuing excellence in a dynamic and competitive operating environment

My research interests lie in the disciplines of archival science and social and cultural informatics.

Archival Science = preserving stuff so that others can find it, use it and understand it

Social and Cultural Informatics = taking information that documents society and culture and transforming it into standardised data forms so you can do more interesting things with it

This has led to the development of two major software systems that are used in Australia and the United Kingdom and one of them has been

central to recent successes with the Australian Research Council (ARC).

The eScholarship Research Centre (ESRC) was formed in 2007 as a part of the University of Melbourne Library. The ESRC collaborates on many significant

public knowledge projects with researchers from within the University as well as with a broad range of external clients. The Centre:

• collaborates with researchers in the use of digital technologies to extend their research capabilities;

• works with the University of Melbourne and others to enhance their digital archive and knowledge preservation infrastructure; and

• participates with the community in the creation and dissemination of information to address societal needs.

• conducts research with a focus on archival science and social and cultural informatics.

The best way to understand the ESRC is to think of it as you would a research centre in the sciences – they are often built around a laboratory which has tools and infrastructure that is specific to its discipline or research focus.

Telescopes for astronomers; Analytical devices for chemists; Accelerators for particle physicists; Mice for medical researchers; and all sorts of imaging and data gathering tools for just about everyone.

The ESRC has The Social and Cultural Informatics Laboratory - a testing ground for archival science and digital humanities.

The Lab is built around a suite of local computers, servers and services based on a cloud service architecture that provides the Storage, Virtual Machines and Network interconnectivity that we need to conduct our research and produce the services required by our colleagues, clients and the community at large. But it also includes temporary storage for physical materials (records, artefacts etc).

To understand better the role of archives and the preservation of scholarly knowledge in the era of digital and networked technologies – that is the 21st Century - it is worth surveying the deeper historical story of the development of research as an undertaking of national priority but also locally within universities.

The focus here is on the situation in Australia and with particular emphasis on the University of Melbourne.

Period One: 1850s – 1900 Colonial Innovation

Period Two: 1900 – 1940s National Development

Period Three: 1950s – 1980s The Golden Age

Period Four: 1980s – 2020s The Digital Transition

Austehc: 1999-2006 Generic Tools for Many Disciplines

1999-ongoing: Creating International Standards to connect up Archival Silos

Contextual Information Frameworks and Radioactive Waste 2002-2007

Open Complex Network Theory meets Archival Persistence

ESRC: 2007-Present Public Knowledge Spaces and Building University Capability

Trove

Research

Stakeholder engagement

Workshops

Context Entity Analysis

Content gathering

Data collection

Curation & selection

Accessioning & processing

https://web.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/ECOM/

http://www.eoas.info/biogs/P000854b.htm

www.pathwaysvictoria.info

Knowledge hubs for community engagement

Pathways Victoria:

“Publicly accessible online since December 2009, Pathways has driven change in archival practice across institutions that hold and reference heritage collections related to the history of child welfare in Victoria. It maps the record collections of over 300 agencies, and provides information to the public about these collections, including how to access them.

http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/

The Find and Connect Web Resource is a gateway to connect Forgotten Australians, Former Child Migrants and their families to information and resources that help make sense of the past, and to see where their story fits in to the broader historical context.

It comprises eight state/territory websites and an overarching national website. Each state and territory website contains historical information about past and present providers of out-of-home care; details of where personal records are held and how to access them; links to support services; and other resources for Forgotten Australians and former child migrants.

In 2011, Pathways Victoria evolved into Find and Connect Australia

A Few Reflections on Infrastructure

Since 1985, ASAP-Austehc-ESRC has retained continuity and focus through relatively stability of staff and the encouragement of the University of Melbourne to keep trying to do good things.

The University has not been able to provide the technology infrastructure we have required when we needed it. We are leaders rather than followers. The University does provide space for staff and a data centre for our servers.

The aim is that by 2020 the University will have closed this infrastructure gap and will provide the digital storage, virtual machine environment and network bandwidth that we need to function at our most productive.

At the moment we have provided ourselves with the Terabyte scale full redundant storage and a very useful virtual machine environment.

There is nothing much we can do about our bandwidth issues.

What we need right now!

The rate of digitisation in the humanities and the social sciences:

In digital imaging of paper records;The digitisation of existing audio and video;

The creation of new research data, especially audio and video recordsAs digital originals

Means that we need access to 100s of Terabytes of storage right now,And if do not act quickly much of this valuable scholarly material.

Your Questions?

(to start things off)

What about Cloud Services?

Associate Professor Gavan McCarthy

Director, eScholarship Research Centre, University Library

The University of Melbourne

gavanjm@unimelb.edu.au