Bamboo Technology Proposal (Public) Submitted to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation on July 14, 2010 1. Introduction and Background..................................................................................................4 2. Consortium and Partner Institutions.....................................................................................6 3. Rationale and Benefits of the Project.....................................................................................6 4. Project Overview...........................................................................................................................9 4.1 Bamboo Work Spaces ...................................................................................................................... 10 4.2 Bamboo Corpora Space ................................................................................................................... 11 4.3 Scholarly Web Services on a Bamboo Services Platform..................................................... 12 4.4 Collections Interoperability .......................................................................................................... 14 4.5 Summary of Project Deliverables ................................................................................................ 15 5. Technical Approach .................................................................................................................. 16 5.1 Technology Ecosystem and Strategy........................................................................................... 16 5.2 Definitions and Scope of “Content” and “Corpora”................................................................. 19 5.3 Work Spaces........................................................................................................................................ 20 5.3.1 Core Work Spaces Capabilities................................................................................................................21 5.3.2 Work Spaces Technology Selection Priorities..................................................................................21 5.3.3 HUBzero Work Spaces ................................................................................................................................22 5.3.4 Enterprise Content Management (ECM / Alfresco) Work Spaces ...........................................26 5.3.5 Shared Tools and Services Information Registry............................................................................28 5.4 Corpora Space: Phase 1 design ..................................................................................................... 32 5.5 Scholarly Services on Bamboo Services Platform .................................................................. 33 5.5.1 Scholarly Services.........................................................................................................................................33 5.5.2 Bamboo Services Platform........................................................................................................................39 5.5.3 Shared Services Lifecycle and Software Developer Kit ................................................................40 5.6 Collections Interoperability Services ......................................................................................... 40 5.7 Architecture of the Bamboo Services Platform....................................................................... 42 5.8 Deployment Strategies for the Bamboo Services Platform................................................. 44 6. Project Organization and Partner Roles ............................................................................ 45 6.1 Project Leadership............................................................................................................................ 48 6.2 Work Spaces........................................................................................................................................ 48 6.3 Corpora Space..................................................................................................................................... 50 6.4 Scholarly Services on a Bamboo Services Platform............................................................... 50 6.5 Collections Interoperability .......................................................................................................... 51 6.6 Other Coordinating Practices and Groups ................................................................................ 51 6.7 Related Projects and Initiatives ................................................................................................... 52 7. Staffing Plan................................................................................................................................. 53 8. Work Plan..................................................................................................................................... 54 9. Intellectual Property ................................................................................................................ 56 10. Long-Term Sustainability of Results................................................................................. 56 10.1 Project Bamboo Consortium....................................................................................................... 56 10.2 Consortial Development............................................................................................................... 59 1 10.3 Humanities Faculty Committee and Technical Advisory Committee for Bamboo Technology Project...................................................................................................................................... 61 11. Reporting and Evaluation..................................................................................................... 62 12. Budget Narrative ..................................................................................................................... 64 13. Appendix 1: Detailed Work Plan........................................................................................ 65 2 Proposal Summary A consortium of ten universities, led by the University of California, Berkeley, will carry out an 18-month technology project to develop and design applications and shared infrastructure for humanities scholars and projects. We request $1.2 million dollars from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and will provide an equal amount of institutional cost-share. This project builds on the major planning effort carried out by Project Bamboo with the generous support of the Mellon Foundation. This 18-month project is the first phase of a proposed three-year project. Over a three-year period, we aim to create two sets of applications that will directly support the research and teaching of large number of scholars in the humanities. “Bamboo Work Spaces” and “Bamboo Corpora Space” will meet needs that were identified during the planning process as core needs for scholarship in the humanities. The first will provide basic and easy-to-use tools for managing and analyzing content; it will serve a wide range of individual researchers and groups of scholars. The second will allow individuals or groups to work on dispersed digital corpora using a range of sophisticated curatorial, analytic, and visualization tools and services. These applications will be supported by two shared infrastructure projects that will help technologists who work with researchers in the humanities. The first infrastructure project will be the development of an evolving set of scholarly web services on a services platform that will help technologists create and support a wide range of tools for scholarship. The second will be the adoption and dissemination of standards and services for interoperability. Together, these infrastructure projects will enable IT organizations, libraries, and digital-humanities projects to leverage one another’s accomplishments while ensuring that the world’s ever-increasing store of digital resources will be easy for researchers in the humanities to access and analyze. This project will begin in October 2010 and run through March 2012. The partner institutions in this project are Australian National University; Indiana University; Northwestern University; Tufts University; University of Chicago; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; University of Maryland; University of Oxford; and University of Wisconsin, Madison. 3 1. Introduction and Background The fundamental questions that launch inquiry in the humanities focus upon issues of interpretation, understanding, meaning, and values. Many of these questions have been with us for centuries—even millennia—yet all of them are posed in places, times, and circumstances that inflect what it is we are asking. The ways we can answer our questions also change over time. Trade routes, printing presses, the rise and fall of nations: all of these have made a difference to inquiry in the humanities. During the past two decades, the development of technology has created a wealth of new possibilities for research, scholarly communications, and teaching within the broad academic realm that includes the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences. Most faculty now routinely stay in touch with colleagues in their fields by e-mail, visit the websites of professional societies, and search library holdings on line. Many use digitized archives that they can search electronically or use digital tools to