Open Letter: To the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Background
AHRC announcement:
http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/news/news_pr/2007/information_for_applicants_to_AHRC_june_deadline.asp 
JISC announcement and AHDS response:
http://ahds.ac.uk/news/futureAHDS.htm

Future Histories Open Letter

We are writing as members of the Future Histories of the Moving Image, an AHRC funded Research Network set up specifically to address the issues of sustainability arising from a number of moving image arts database and digitised collection projects in the UK – many of which have also benefited from AHRC funding. 

Your recent announcement of withdrawal of funding from the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) is a matter of urgent concern.  The announcement was apparently taken without consulting the wider research community and the justification you give for the decision is ill-informed and spurious for reasons outlined in the attached document. 

The financial imperative that seems to have driven your decision ironically serves only to reveal the inadequacy of the funding that the AHDS has received to date to undertake its considerable range of services.  These services are essential to the AHRC’s own aims of conserving research outcomes and making them accessible.  We do not believe that an answer to paucity is to cut off funding and pretend the problem does not exist. 

We question both the information received by the AHRC and its wisdom in reaching this decision. We would like to draw your attention to a publicly accessible Prime Minister’s petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/AHDSfunding/ to which 1000 members of your research community have added their names drawing international attention to this regrettable decision.  We demand that, as senior representatives of the UK’s Arts and Humanities research community, you seek to rectify the chaotic situation you have brought to pass. We believe it is imperative for you to calm the unrest you have caused by demonstrating to the Arts and Humanities academic community that you value and support long term sustained digital resources arising from research. 

Yours faithfully, 
Steven Ball, British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection at Central St. Martins, University of the Arts, London
Stuart Comer, Curator: Film at Tate Modern
William Fowler, Curator of Artists’ Moving Image, British Film Institute National Archive
Julia Knight, Databasing key documents and narrative chronologies of artists’ film/video distributors in the UK, University of Sunderland
Peter Knott
Nick Lambert, Archigram Archival Project, University of Westminster (formerly of Computer Art Context History etc, University of London Birkbeck)
Lucy Reynolds, Content Manager, LuxOnline
Barry Smith, Capturing the past, preserving the future: digitisation of the National Review of Live Art video collection, University of Bristol
Ian White, Whitechapel Art Gallery/Independent curator and writer

Attachment 

The AHRC Defunding of the AHDS 

The AHRC give three reasons for reaching their decision to cease funding the AHDS.  However, we believe these are ill-informed for the following reasons: 

1.       “Arts and Humanities researchers have developed significant IT knowledge and expertise in the past decade … Much technical knowledge is now readily available within HEIs, either from IT support services or from academics.” (AHRC) 

While the context within which the AHDS was initially supported by the AHRC has undoubtedly changed, it is simply not possible to assume that the technical knowledge necessary for developing and maintaining e-resource/digitisation projects is “now readily available within HEIs”.  This assumption suggests a lack of awareness of the kind of IT support/expertise available in many HEIs. IT support services are more usually preoccupied with maintaining internal networking, email, virtual learning, websites and so on; as we know from our own experiences of directing e-resource projects, they rarely have the expertise to provide specialist technical support for digitisation, database or e-resource projects.  Such knowledge may be available in some institutions, particularly those that have a history of specialised Science-based research, but the level and extent of technical knowledge is by no means uniform across the HE sector in the arts and humanities and can indeed vary quite dramatically from institution to institution. Similarly, whilst all academics have had to acquire a range of IT skills over the last decade, this rarely includes knowledge of best practice in digitisation projects. Most arts and humanities academics are first and foremost subject experts and, again as we have discovered in the process of developing our own e-resources, advice within consistent standards from a third party specialist such as the AHDS is invaluable.   

To assert that the necessary technical knowledge is now “readily available within HEIs…” belies the fact that it is precisely this consistent and specialised knowledge and expertise that is required to design and bring such projects to fruition.  As the AHDS point out and illustrate at their workshops for AHRC applicants, digitisation/e-resource projects are far from straightforward and invariably encounter problems during their execution.    

2.   “Long term storage of digital materials and sustainability is best dealt with by an active engagement with HEIs rather than through a centralised service”. (AHRC) 

While HEIs may become increasingly equipped to handle long-term storage of digital materials, simply ‘storing’ them does not make them readily available to the wider research community (nor does it necessarily equate with preservation).  In particular, the wider research community may not even know that they exist.  A key role the AHDS plays, as a national organisation, is in building an interconnected collection of digital research data that is readily and widely visible to the wider research community.  And, if anything, this role urgently needs developing to support the growing number of more complex digital resources being developed.  The national and international visibility of digitisation research projects is absolutely essential if the resulting e-resources are to be used and to contribute to the future development of arts and humanities research.  Maximising the visibility and use of our e-resources is integral to developing their sustainability, and it is beyond the resources of individual HEIs to undertake such a role.  Instead it requires a national infrastructure which can participate in ensuring the long-term sustainability, maintenance and availability of those e-resources and collections of digital research data. 

It is hard to ascertain on what evidence the AHRC’s opinion that HEI’s are best placed to meet either the technical requirements or the long-term sustainability of projects with digital outputs is based.  Our own experiences and those of other colleagues suggest that this is far from the case.  We are not aware of the AHRC carrying out any consultation with HEIs or individual projects prior to making their decision in order to ascertain the capabilities of HEIs in these respects.  

Many of the projects themselves exist only for limited periods of as little as two to three years with no guarantee of continued support from either the AHRC or indeed their host institutions, who in turn are often operating within budgetary constraints.  Even when the expertise is in place there is often no guarantee that the HEI will be prepared or able to provide continued support for, or sustainability of, these outputs.  

Without the services provided by the AHDS, AHRC funded e-resources are in serious jeopardy:  completed projects already archived with the AHDS may find themselves ‘homeless’, current projects will have to try and locate alternative long-term depositories to archive their resource, while new projects just setting up will require guidance on possible archival strategies.  In all these cases, projects will need additional funding to cover unforeseen archival costs. 

The continued existence of the AHDS ensures a continuity that otherwise cannot be guaranteed. 

3.       “If technical know-how is ever more readily available, it becomes harder to justify the substantial, and potentially increasing, costs of the AHDS.” (AHRC) 

Again, that technical know-how is readily available is an assumption that is not borne out by evidence or experience.  It also fails to recognise the specialised nature of the “technical know-how” involved in the creation and sustainability of digital resource projects and thus seriously undervalues the expertise developed by the AHDS.  On its own website the JISC acknowledges that “the AHDS has established itself as a centre of expertise and excellence in the creation, curation and preservation of digital resources and has been responsible for a considerable engagement of the Arts and Humanities community with ICT and a significant increase in that community’s knowledge and use of digital resources” (13 June 2007).  However, IT is a constantly changing and developing field and the need for the service that the AHDS provides has not diminished, rather it becomes increasingly indispensable.  Ensuring that the Arts and Humanities community continue to work to common standards and adhere to best practice as digital technology continues to develop remains essential if the value of these resources is to remain accessible to future generations of scholars.  With the future of AHDS in jeopardy, it is unclear who will provide this advice and continuity of service. 

It is also pertinent to note that the AHRC have been keen to stress the need for all digitisation resource projects to address the issue of their sustainability.  The AHDS in its present form may not offer a total solution to that issue, but it has the potential to be developed, while its demise or a severely reduced service through the withdrawal of funding would remove or restrict the only national organisation that can assist and support e-resource projects in this matter.