# Presentation: 290356

## University Perspectives on Governance: MetaArchive Cooperative & DSpace Foundation

**Tyler O. Walters**
- Associate Director, Technology & Resource Services
- Georgia Tech Library & Information Center
-    Global Digital Format Registry Workshop
-    NARA – November 14-15, 2007

## Case Study: MetaArchive Cooperative 

_**Project Summary**_**:**
- Six partner institutions:
- Emory - Georgia Tech - Florida State U.
- Virginia Tech – Auburn U. – Univ. of Louisville
- Initial funding: LC/NDIIPP – $1.2M initial effort to develop cooperative for preservation of digital content, 2004-2009
_**Goals**_**:**
- Distributed preservation network infrastructure (LOCKSS)
- Conspectus of digital content held by the partner sites
- Harvest a body of most critical content to be preserved (3 TB)
- Cooperative charter model for collaboration and sustainability
- Communications: Internet2: Abilene, Southern Crossroads (SoX), Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX) networks

## Four Modes of Sustainability

_**Organizational**_
**	****Strategies that advance collaborations between orgs., to perform a program’s functions and achieve a particular goal**
_**Economic**_
**	****Strategies that generate revenues and investments necessary to support digital libraries**
_**Technology**_
**	****Strategies that advance collaborations to create, disseminate, and maintain technologies**
_**Collections**_
**	****Strategies used to ensure that the defining qualities characterizing information objects and collections persist**
_***Underlying Characteristic***_
**Internetworking of technologies, content, people, organizations**
**Social Network and Diffusion of Innovations Theories (E. Rogers, 1962)**

## Mode 2: Organizational Issues

- “Sustaining the Cooperative”
- _Advancing our paradigms_:
- Organization
- Technology
- Services
- _Levels: Organizational Model of Sustainability_:
- 1)	Single institution: Emory or Georgia Tech, etc.
- 2)	Consortium: Cooperative Charter
- 3)	Non-profit mgmt. entity: Educopia Institute
- 4) Nat’l/Int’l strategic partnerships: NDIIPP, NHPRC, etc.

##     MetaArchive as Consortia: Cooperative Charter

- 1). _**Single Institution**_
- Resources (finances/infrastructure) and expertise
- Level 2: _**Consortia**_ - Cooperative Charter addresses four areas:
**	****1. Types of membership in the MetaArchive Cooperative:**
**Sustaining Members** – responsible for developing and  testing the preservation network technology and operating a preservation node
**Preservation Members** – responsible for operating a preservation node, ingesting collections from partner institutions, and making the node available for testing
**Contributing Members** – cultural memory organizations that possess digital content to preserve via the MetaArchive Preservation Network. They contribute fees for this service, do not operate node
**Sponsorships**– cultural memory orgs that own or possess digital content they wish to preserve, but cannot contribute service fees. A Sustaining Member sponsors the preservation of their digital content

**Notes:**
Single Institution: Resources (finances/infrastructure) and expertise
Consortium
Institutions create to form a program of digital library activity
Generates additional value and elements of sustainability that individual institutions cannot generate on their own. 
Sum of the whole (i.e., program) is greater than its parts (i.e., the institution)
Long-term collaboration between projects, users, sponsors, agencies, other stakeholders is present

## Cooperative Charter Cont’d

**2). How MetaArchive is organized, governed, and communications**
- Steering Cmte.
- Content Cmte.
- Preservation Cmte.
- Technical Cmte.
- Partner institution reps can serve terms on the committees, ensuring a broad participation in governance and operations
**3). Cooperative services to members**
- Digital preservation network (dev./maint., content  ingest/retrieval)
- Digital collection disaster recovery
- Dig. Pres. network:  member assistance & external consulting
- LOCKSS services
**4). A. Technical specs for preservation network **
**	****B. Membership Agreement between the six universities**

## MetaArchive and Educopia Institute

**Level 3: **_**Non-profit management entity**_ – three issues:
**a “neutral” home**
**2) Continuing need for financial resources**
**3) Expose MetaArchive to new dig. projects, **
**inform its development**
**4) Economically efficient, catalytic structure**
_**Educopia Institute**_**:**
- Provide oversight to MA Cooperative and other digital projects
- Low-cost, low overhead conduit for digital library, scholarly communication technology projects
- Advance cyberinfrastructure to drive research, teaching, learning, knowledge transfer in college and university  educational settings

**Notes:**
Non-profit Management Entity:
Further provide strategic guidance and support for organizational sustainability and program development
    Broader organizational support and direction to consortia
Facilitates relationships with other organizations and consortia
Provides low-cost, low-overhead conduit to manage fiscal resources

##  Nat’l Strategic Partnership: LC/NDIIPP

**Level 4: **_**Access to Resources in Nat’l Digital Preservation Context**_**:**
- Access to digital preservation initiatives, partnerships, their approaches
- The Driver to develop MA models: Organizational, Technology, Services
_**Facilitate communication**_ on dig. sustainability, gather know-how
_**Economic models**_ development for digital library activity
_**Align programs**_ with Nat’l/Int’l initiatives
- Developing new revenues, new knowledge, new technologies
_**Nat'l/Int’l approaches**_ are emerging to guide funding
**US: NARA/SDSC partnership, NDIIPP, others**
**UK: JISC, DCC**
**Australia: APSR, NLA ****	**
**Germany: NESTOR**
**Netherlands: KB – Digital Longevity Program **
**	****	****	****	****	****	****	****	****	**
***MetaArchive Int’l Strategy? ****  ****	****	****	****	****	****	**

**Notes:**
National / International Strategic Initiative Partnerships:
Consortium links itself with larger strategic agendas
   Fosters proper strategic alignment, funding, and additional access to expertise and new knowledge generation
Consortium interweaves itself with many insts., consortia, private orgs., government agencies, and expansive strategies
Bring to bear a wealth of resources, financial and otherwise, as well  as people with a diversity of knowledge, skills, interests

## MetaArchive: Economic Sustainability

**Steps 1,2) **_**Institution, Consortium / Development Partner, User Group**_**:**** **
- Inst. Inputs:
- server rm., labor time, expertise, collections, network
- Expand members:
- more resources, interest in developing models
**Step 3) **_**Non-profit Entity / Governing Org.:**_ Educopia Institute
- Revenues from synergies w/ new partners, related projects
**Step 4) **_**Nat’l / Int’l Strategic Partnerships**_**: **
**Funding: $1.2 Mill** (2004-09) – **Servers, Project Staff** (tech & non-tech)
**Alignment with new Economic Models and Nat’l / Int’l Initiatives**
- _Revenues from Service Fees_:
- Content ingest/retrieval, format migration, digital collection disaster recovery, digital preservation network consulting, LOCKSS services
- Fees contribute to network maintenance
- Beginning this phase,
- difficult to estimate revenues

**Notes:**
...As with earlier modes of sustainability, economic mode matures through successful construction of layers of interdependency

Economic inputs: Finances, Infrastructure, and Expertise
...all have monetary value

1). Individual Institutions and Initial Development Partners Group:
 Provide a foundation of these economic inputs

2). Consortia and Adopting Developer and User Groups:
Inputs combine to generate new ideas and new infrastructures
Also, seek funding to apply to existing economic resources

3). Non-profit Management Entity and Governing Organizations:
bring more partners, projects, consortia together in pursuit of generating funds (and new knowledge) to carry out objectives

4). National and International Strategic Partnerships alignment: 
helps to identify further revenues to infuse programs/projects

Goods and Services:
In between layers: goods/services that each entity can provide directly to interested consumers to generate additional revenue
Consumers: entities that utilize digital library tech. and related svcs.

Revenues are not meant to meet all costs incurred by the technology developing organization, but rather to provide one of several necessary revenue streams

Sources of Funding:
From partnerships and other relationships, to fees for goods and services...

*all must combine to meet economic needs organizations incur while developing and sustaining digital libraries*

## DSpace Foundation: Timeline

***Formation of Foundation summer 2007***

## Issues faced

- Diverse sets of needs-lack of _coordination_
- Burden on the developer team to provide infrastructure (HP/MIT)
- Inability to move strategically vs. incrementally
- Opportunities missed as no single person/org to represent the community objectively
- (Executive Director, DSpace Foundation)

## Why the DSpace Foundation?

- Set up independent organization for governance-
- Legal entity that owns the copyright
- Can enter into agreements/contracts
- Raise funding
- Can be _nimble_- outside of University infrastructure
- Reports to the Board
- 501c3 charitable organization so would have the broadest range of options for funding and outreach to the community
- A modicum of staff to facilitate and provide guidance, but not to write code
- (Director, CTO, Outreach, Website, Release Mgr.)

## Role of the DSpace Board

- Lightweight initial board- 6 members split from the commercial and non commercial sector
- Help in the fund raising
- Sounding board for strategic roadmap
- Build awareness of the organization
- _Facilitate connections_ of importance for the Foundation

## Strategic objectives

- Promote and develop the software and its support community
- _Make it easy_ to contribute and participate in the community
- Launch future iterations of the software
- Develop strategic _partnerships_, bring value
- Develop long term funding model
- 	(HP / MIT now. Long-term: mix of community, corporate sponsorships, services, grants)

## Challenges

- Continue to foster community ownership
- Move strategically vs. incrementally
- Long term model for open source software in this sector
- *(DSpace slides kindly provided by Michele Kimpton, Executive Director, DSpace Foundation)

## “Take Aways”

**The Rise of Virtual Organizations**
- Operate across institutional governance, share resources
**Formalized Trust** (Ring and Van de Ven)
- Neutrality, Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy, Self-Interest
**“****New Regime” Skills:**
- Engage and solicit partners
- Facilitate partner roles & responsibilities
- Project management skills (PMI)
- Diplomacy, persistent communication, transparency
**Descriptors:**
- Being “Nimble,” “Easy to Partner with,” “Catalytic,” “Flexible [funding], Coordinated, Connected , Leveraging

**Final Thought...**** **
**“****In the flat world, more and more business will be done through collaboration...the more the flattening of the world **_**connects all the knowledge pools together**_**, the more new specialties will be spawned, and the more innovation will come from putting these specialties together in new and different combinations.”**
- Feel free to contact me at:
**      ****Tyler Walters****	**
**   ****Tyler@gatech.edu**
**404-385-4489**