GRL-2020: New types of organizations?

Chris Greer of the National Science Foundation is here at GRL 2020, part of the attempt by organizers to bring representatives of all sectors of the GRL cloud together for strategic thinking.  As it happens,  the NSF has just announced a solicitation for
Sustainable digital data preservation and access network partners (DataNet).

The call is a $USD 100 million carrot (5 years, 5 organizations @ $20 M each) which will tempt quite a lot of the horses in the field.

Chris articulates the goal of creating new types of organizations that combine and integrate archival perspectives, library science skills, expertise in computer Science, information science, and policy capabilities appropriate to the challenge of managing and curating the explosive increase in data of all types.

The support of long-term preservation of data will require adaptability and flexibility in the face of a rapidly evolving environment, thus requiring migration of formats over time, and research and development for problems we don't fully understand at the moment.  An explicit facet, then, is remaining at the frontiers while supporting stability.  A daunting remit.  Oh... and it has to be self-sustaining within a decade.

The outline of the program is, then,

• Sustainability, economically and technically
• Interoperability: a federation of repositories will evolve (the 5 awardees will become parts of a federation of data networks as a condition of participation)
• Digital capability: the machine room is the paradigm, rather than shelves.

The machine room is expected to be managed with the model of a library in mind -- a sustainable, cross-sector data library that has budget and policies that match its mission.   

This is not a domain-oriented call… there are lots of precedents for that, and Chris suggested that these have not produced sustainable models.  They require ongoing support from the NSF, and their activities increasingly are mortgaged to this maintenance.  NSF wants to see preservation belong to society as a whole, not just a given sector or government agency, and this call is a broad overture to the community to support this perspective.
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Image: from the opening reception of GRL 2020