Initial Questions
These are the questions we are starting with as a means of canvassing ourselves about our positions on this topic and about possible sources. We invite anyone to address these questions in the blog, and if anyone would like to write a guest blog post on any of these topics, please let us know.
1) This grant is about sustaining digital scholarship, and sustaining the arts through digital scholarship. Could we start by asking you to position yourself and your work in relation to this topic? How is it most relevant to what you do? Where do your particular interests lie? What would you say the single biggest area of concern is?
2) How would you define sustainability in the context of your work?
3) Please note below any papers or bibliographies that are relevant to the lit review. You can send them to us if you want and we'll enter the material for you, if that would save you time and trouble.
4) Can you think offhand of any key resources that we should be including--particular thinkers, articles, books, government reports, other related research projects or organizations?
5) Can you think of any sources of information or finding aids that we should be drawing on in conducting the literature review?
6) We're hoping that everyone will choose one or two issues related to sustainability on which they would read and annotate some key pieces in the literature review, and which they might address in the blog. Is there, at this stage, a particular issue that you would be willing to take on?
Optional Questions
7) Do you think digital scholarship helps sustain the spoken, published, and performing arts in Canada? if so, how? If not, should it?
8) How are digital scholarly innovation and creative arts innovation related, if at all?
9) Are you involved with any digital projects or publications that are trying to sustain themselves beyond an initial period of funding? If so, what's the approach to sustainability?
10) What do you think of how SSHRC and/or the Canada Council has responded to the shift towards digital media? Are you aware of any programs that address sustainability explicitly? any programs that have been used to contribute towards sustainability?
11) Is it harder for bigger or for smaller projects to sustain themselves?
12) What is the publishing industry--for the arts, or for scholarship--going to look like in 5 years? 10 years?
13) How might issues such as "public good" (in terms of open access, digital content diversity, community linkages) be considered against more quantifiable economic measures?
14) Are you familiar with government policy with respect to the digital economy or IT? If so, what is your view on it? Do you see a major difference between the party platforms on sustainable IT growth? Are the Libs/Cons essentially proposing the same cyberinfrastructural development? In what ways do they differ? Do other parties have policies on this?
15) Does Canada differ in its approach to sustaining digital scholarly or arts activities from other countries of which you are aware?
16) What is the relationship between accessibility (to technology, to education) and sustainability?
Concluding Questions
17) What do you most want this project to accomplish? How can we tackle that?
18) Is there anything that you'd like to suggest in terms of how we move forward?
