Content Models for Enhancement and Sustainability (CMES)

The project will develop an extensible framework for representing and managing broad categories of complex digital collections produced by arts and humanities research, and a methodology for extending this framework. By creating open, generic (yet flexible) solutions, the project aims to maximise the sustainability of digital resources through technological change, and to facilitate the re-use of the materials in innovative ways that neither we nor the resource developers could anticipate.

The project will achieve this within the context of the Fedora digital repository software. Fedora has the concept of 'content models', which may be regarded as 'data types' for digital objects. We will exploit extensions to this concept to create 'content patterns' that serve as templates for creating, managing, sustaining, exposing and re-using digital collections that conform to the pattern.

We will develop these content models for two specific groups of collections - (i) digital texts, and (ii) multi-media performing arts collections - and we will use them to model a set of target collections within a digital repository instance that we will maintain after project completion. We will thus contribute to the enhancement and sustainability of these collections; however, we must emphasise that we are not developing ad hoc solutions for these resources, but rather content models and software that can be used for other collections of analogous type, as well as a methodology for extending our approach to other types of digital resource.

Apart from the benefits gained in academic environments, the project will have broader impact in the non-academic world:
- Performing arts practitioners with an interest in researching theatre design and production (who would find the Adolphe Appia collection of great value) or in Scottish traditional performance.
- Performing arts practitioners with an interest in long-term sustainability of digital recordings and in modelling the structure(s) of performances.
- Institutions responsible for managing digital material, in particular complex material that goes beyond the 'standard' material (such as pre-prints) currently found in many repositories, for example research data and outputs from digitisation projects. These institutions will include higher education, but will potentially include many non-academic bodies, such as: libraries, archives, museums and other memory organisations; media, cultural and creative industries; commercial companies carrying out scientific research; hospitals/clinics (note that digital object types and research activities that occur in the arts and humanities may have their analogues in the sciences, e.g. annotation of images/video in medical research and practice).
- Research Funders, who will benefit from increased visibility, sustainability and re-use of the research that they fund. The project will in particular facilitate 'long tail' re-use through its concern for long-term sustaining the digital material
- The project will have potential for economic benefits. The 'digital economy' and 'knowledge economy' are key foundations of the UK's continued prosperity. Effective management of digital assets - effective implying sustainability and support for access and re-use in innovative ways - underlies any work in the digital economy, in whatever field (for example the cultural and creative industries, or in medical research). The development of flexible methods for digital asset management (as exemplified by this project) may thus have far-reaching consequences outside HE.
- Developers of tools for processing, linking and mashing up digital content exposed on the web. These need not be based in an academic environment - they may be in government, industry, or simply interested members of the public, and may use data from various sources. The use of content models, modular/standards-based interfaces, and in particular linked data approaches, will facilitate such mash-ups.
- This may lead in turn to social benefits among the wider community, increasing digital inclusivity. Many of these developers form part of an increasing movement to open up publicly funded data to data developers among the public who want to mash it up themselves. While in many cases this relates to government data (e.g. data.gov.uk or londondatastore), it applies to other data as well. One could imagine, for example, the Stormont Papers being mashed up with historical government statistics relating to Northern Ireland, if the information were exposed appropriately to the Web. Our approach, which is built around fine-grained access, interoperability derived from the use of common patterns, and the use of linked data technologies, will enable this sort of social computing.