Who needs tool directories?

Who should be responsible for creating and maintaining directories?

Quinn Dombrowski

May 26, 2020

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Some things to consider:

• ¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0
• What would a directory look like that you personally would be willing and able to contribute to? Does that even exist?
• How can they be sustained when the grant runs out?

Quinn Dombrowski

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 There are lots of directories that I have personally been willing and able to contribute to… for a time, and with a certain amount of attention. I’ve advocated for comprehensive directories (like DiRT) to be run not by individuals, nor even by individual DH organizations (like centerNet or ACH) but by ADHO, because comprehensive directories are resources that are extremely labor-intensive, and are not regionally-specific in who they benefit. But the recent changes in ADHO organization, which decentralizes everything short of the conference and pushes it to individual COs to initiate and lead, moves the organization in the opposite direction.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 I’d like to question the assumption in “How can directories be sustained when the grant runs out?” I don’t believe we should be building infrastructure that requires ongoing maintenance and work using grant funding, unless there’s a plan to support and fund that infrastructure moving forward. One-time funding to build things with ongoing costs is a terrible model that has failed us as a community time and time again. (Sure, institutions say they’ll pay for project hosting and maintenance for some number of years post-grant, but often that just doesn’t happen because there’s no consequences for not letting things decay when there’s other systems and projects demanding attention.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 As I’ve said in “Who are directories useful for?” and “What should directories look like?“, there may be some value to focused (by method and/or material) directories, and those might be, broadly speaking, sustainable by an individual or small group, given a narrow enough scope. (Despite my best efforts to never run a directory again, I… still run some of these smaller, focused lists of tools.) But particularly with regard to comprehensive directories, I’d rather see the time and money and energy that would go towards directories (and negotiating who should maintain them, and holding those parties responsible for actually doing so) for advocating for and supporting better scholarly communication practices around tools.

Geoffrey Rockwell

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 I’m not sure anyone in particular should be responsible for creating and maintaining directories, but I have some ideas about what sorts of outfits that have already shown a capacity to be sustainable might be able to embrace directories as a function.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 Associations: One type of organization that could benefit from maintaining a directory would be a scholarly association whose members benefit from their being such a directory. Scholarly associations have maintained things like journals and bibliographies for their members. The maintenance can be a way of defining what items count to the association, which is a danger if it becomes a gate-keeping function.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Journals: A digital journal might maintain a tool directory as a form of collection of reviews. In fact, tool reviews have been part of what digital humanities journals like CHum did for a while.

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 Conferences: Catalogues of tools or tool exhibits are a common feature of conferences. The catalogues or exhibit directories can become a way of documenting tools in a timely fashion if published regularly.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Centres and Institutes: Centres can benefit from maintaining a directory if it gives them prominence in an area that they seek to establish a reputation in.

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 Infrastructure Providers: In some countries there is now ongoing funding for research computing infrastructure. The right sort of directory can be used to guide infrastructure users and as a front desk for communities that support the infrastructure.

LISA SPIRO

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 I like Geoffrey’s list of organizations that might have capacity to maintain a tool directory. In my view, a digital humanities center or institute (or perhaps infrastructure provider) is most likely to have access to the labor required to keep up with the work, although it would likely need ongoing financial support, whether from funding agencies that routinely invest in software development or professional organizations (of course, their finances are limited). Under the guidance of an experienced editor, student staff could maintain the tool listings and solicit or write brief descriptions. But I’d want to see evidence that such a resource would be valued and used by the communities it serves.  Even with ongoing institutional support, it’s tough to bring order to a space that is constantly shifting.

FRANK FISCHER

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 I also like Geoffrey’s idea of tool directories »as a function« of different organisations. At the micro level, there are many such phenotypes: e.g., DARIAH-DE provides a list of their own tools and services, CLARIN-NL has a list of tools in the CLARIN infrastructure, DH Austria maintains a focused but more diverse list, and there is a French list of corpus exploration tools, etc. etc. What unites these in-house approaches is that there are bigger structures behind them that do not need the participation of third parties.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 More open, more comprehensive approaches like the one the DiRT Directory was following, tried to make the community contribute to make the directory their own. From what I gathered, all these incentives weren’t very fruitful, and it keeps being difficult to lower the entrance barrier to actually involve the community, Wikipedia-style. TAPoR has a workflow which enables registered users to contribute to tool entries or to add new tools, moderated by the administrator admin(s). ADHO’s Special Interest Group (SIG) in Digital Literary Stylistics makes it even easier and runs a simple Google Spreadsheet where all and sundry can contribute.

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Although, based on the lessons learned in the past decade, I’m unsure about how to involve researchers in the curation workflow of tool directories, I’m sure we will be seeing new approaches and gather new experiences from the models in place.