 get started. Welcome all. Thanks for joining us. I'm Cliff Lynch, the director of CNI and you've reached CNI's spring 2021 virtual meeting. This is the first day of our synchronous sessions. We will be doing synchronous sessions scattered throughout this week and next week we will have some plenary synchronous sessions. I do just want to remind you that we have also released a rich set of pre-recorded sessions which are an integral part of this meeting. We're relying considerably more heavily on on-demand sessions this week. So please take advantage of those as your time permits. There's a lot of really good material in there. I want to note that the session is being recorded and we will be making it publicly available after the after the meeting is concluded. A couple of quick mechanical things. There is a chat. Please feel free to use it. And there is also a Q&A tool at the bottom of your screen. Please feel free to put questions in at any point as they occur to you. We will address all the questions after the presentations are complete. Diane Goldenberg Hart from CNI will beam in and moderate those questions. I would note we also have the capability during the questions. If you want to pose a question by audio you can raise your hands and we can enable your audio. There is a closed caption transcript available and please avail yourself of that if it's helpful to you. I think those are all of the mechanical things I needed to mention. So let me move on to introduce this topic and I'm really delighted that we have this topic on the agenda and Lisa and Heidi with us. Heidi Imker is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I always seem to want to say Champaign-Urbana. And Lisa Johnston is from the University of Minnesota. They are both key movers in the data curation network which is a really to my mind extremely strategic effort that has been running for a number of years in sort of experimental mode with support from the Sloan Foundation. It is one of the exceedingly few genuine examples of an effort to scale up data curation across the research enterprise and higher education enterprise and it's I think really important. One of the themes that seems to be showing up in the CNI synchronous sessions that we have going this week is the one of sustainability. We have a lot of projects who are looking at pathways to genuine sustainability and those involve typically issues around both funding and governance and I am very eager to hear what the data curation network is thinking along those lines. So without taking up any more time I just want to welcome you all today to this session and to thank Lisa and Heidi for joining us and I believe Heidi will begin the presentation so I will disappear and hand it over to Heidi. Great well thank you so much Cliff that was a really nice introduction and we really appreciate that and we may have quoted you later on in our slides. So I'm Heidi and I am from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign which we've used every permutation possible for that name so Urbana Champaign-Champaign-Urbana is fine. So Lisa and I are going to just sort of ping back and forth a bit and we'll try and keep this interesting and lively as we go through but I'll just give you an idea of kind of the structure of what we'll be talking about today. So I'll start with a brief overview of the data curation network for anybody who is unfamiliar or just sort of needs an update and then we'll talk about the timeline for our sustainability planning which has actually been going on for the entire time that we have been working on the data curation network. With that that will hopefully orient everybody in terms of you know what we're doing what kind of sustainability we're really talking about and so then we'd like to take a really quick poll just to get a sense from our audience members you know where what why you came to the session and where what your role is and then from there we'll go into specifics about about the planning that we've done. So the data curation network our mission really is about connecting people and so that's connecting people with curation on data curation responsibilities and it's very much that idea of you know doing better together with that you know favorite African proverb that we we all like to like to quote. One thing I do want to say though is that we came together really to figure out data curation so this was not because this group of you know individuals or universities had it figured out and we were banding together in our promise it was really because you know this was a problem that we felt like we needed to solve and we could solve it better together. So just to to give you a little bit of context to I came from a STEM background which had a pretty specific particular in the way that I was academically raised a specific way in which curation was talked about talked about and thought about and when I interviewed for my position in 2014 I actually asked my my search committee I said you know what is data curation and nobody could actually give me a very concrete reply so it was you know fairly nebulous and very much in flux and as nothing against the committee there is you know some serious serious talent and expertise on that committee but it really did speak to the fact that it really hadn't been nailed down in this particular context in terms of generalist repositories and in terms of library services around data curation and this kind of really broad remit of you know this data sharing across so many disciplines. So my point really there is we wanted to try and nail it down and really to operationalize it what is it in practice we have these sort of nebulous you know ideas but literally what do you do in terms of data curation. So that was a lot of the impetus for the data curation network is really to nail down those actions and then try to really standardize those across the different context and in organizations that we're coming from and then really figure out what kind of expertise was needed because we could tell that you needed a lot but we weren't exactly sure what it was going to be that would be needed and then to share that expertise and share that work across you know distributed across this network then. So the DCN right there at the very top is really rooted in that curation doing the action of curation as a network and the ability to then scale that you know our curation expertise and rely on each other and depend on each other you know in these actions. As I just told you though and I think it's probably likely that many of the people who are in attendance today have experienced themselves there was just not a lot of concrete cohesiveness in our practices they were sort of similar but it was like oh you do this when you do this that so that was one of the things that we really had to do was try to to work out what it would really be. So that meant there ended up being an educational component that really layered right in right after we started this so and that happened in terms of professional development and then the creation of some best practices. So for example this has come out in the data curation primers which you may have heard about and also codifying the curate step process between what we call our curation outline. This also ended up leading to just straight R&D so it turns out there's a whole lot of questions that are just fundamental to data curation particularly in the context who has data who's trying to curate what is valuable about it is it valuable to the same thing to the end user or to the depositor or to you or to me. So there's all these fundamental questions that have come out around it too which which makes a lot of sense but then the last part is really this piece about sustainability which is what we're going to focus on today. So how can we do this sustainably? So the grant would end we all know grants end that's how they work. So what were we going to do when it was over because we knew that the data stewardship would not be over and we would need to continue to continue moving on. So I really wanted to frame you know where the DCN started so what was it like when we first started in 2016 and what have we learned and figured out you know as we've gone on and particularly about curation in scale. So we began with this planning phase this was a planning grant that was funded by Sloan it was a one-year grant from 2016 to 17 and we initially started with six institutions and then moved to eight. We were then awarded an implementation grant from again from Sloan from 2018 to now 2021. We grew from eight to 12 partners at that point and then now this is our transition. What do you do after the grant it? So we're smack in the middle of that transition right now we currently have 12 partners and then we after this we hope we plan we believe there is a sustaining phase that will come that will come afterwards. So Lisa is there anything you wanted to jump in and say before? No let's take the poll. Okay so yep that was a little bit of background on us so just to get some context and so you know what we're really kind of talking about here and so now just a little bit about you quick three questions. So I have launched the poll can everyone see that? Lisa and Heidi do you see the poll? Yep I can see it. Okay great all right we're starting to get some responses now. Perfect. We are at about 80% still ticking up I think I'll leave this up for another 10 seconds or so I'm going to go ahead and close down the poll with 86%. All right thanks everybody for participating. Shall I share those results out now Heidi? That would be great. There we go. I thought there'd be a lot more unicorns I did I thought this was a covert social science experiment but very good okay that's very helpful we'll think about that you know as we as we move forward through through the slides and hopefully this will key in on some points that are important to you. So back to this data curation network timeline that I had mentioned so this was in fact our sustainability timeline and it was it was literally built into the very first first grant the planning grant that we submitted and has been part of it throughout the entire course. So we'll talk about some really great benefits to that that it's been so integral to the entire process that we've been working through but also a few things that made it hard. So first just sort of a kind of a clue about what our thoughts were at these different sorts of sort of phases. So you know like I said it was literally part of the grants so and especially when you're just working on a grant you know you have no actual obligations yet and it's you know seemed really smart it was like oh wow it's super corrected everybody knows that that's really hard and it takes a lot of preparation so it was it was terrific it just it made it made a whole lot of sense. And then we we got into you know really trying to implement the network and we were trying to implement the network and so that was part of it that ended up being really difficult because we were trying to you know figure out sustainability and you know we'll give more details about that in a few minutes but it felt kind of awkward in the middle of it because sustainability is somewhat of a research project in and of itself and we were just trying to figure it out. So one of the analogies that that we've used then it's like a little bit like trying to figure out the market for an ice cream shop and we're still trying to raise the cows. So at least and I are both from the Midwest and actually grew up in a dairy farm so that speaks to me a lot. But it was very much like we're like what's Jiro what do you do and then like sustaining something that is actually you know fairly in in flocks you know just definitely our our ideas changed as we went along. So it's definitely to the credit to you know the DC and Kokis and you know certainly Lisa and Claire and Tim who did a lot in the sustainability. So we took it very very seriously and we did a ton of work so really that first you know kind of takeaways is the amount of research and prep that went into this was just was really huge and again we'll be more details in a minute. Really huge but despite years of knowing that this would happen and the fact that we worked very hard on our sustainability plan it's still feel like that that grant came out of nowhere. It still was like we had the meeting we're like oh it's time and it was really sort of sort of alarming to us. So that's the other kind of takeaway to to think about is that it really does acquire you know this a length of time to plan. I could only assume there's probably one or two maybe on the call if we're like oh no it took you that long we could do it in a month and I'm like no I don't believe you like I just don't. It was it was and you'll see in terms of what we did you know we tried to be super thoughtful about it but we did still end up moving you know multiple times during this process and we still are moving so it's still not exactly concrete. So what did our journey really look like so you know again the sustainability was outlined in both our planning and implementation grants so for example before we even went into implementation we were already looking at cost models and interviewing stakeholders so that was you know mainly at that point our own you know administrations. Once we moved into that implementation phase it got more intense and we did a lot more activities so talking with a lot of organizations who are similar to us in terms of the structure and kind of what we were trying to do you know across multiple institutions or had tried to to transition from a grant into sustainable so for example we talked to C and we talked to Portage and Texas Digital Library lots of different places. Can I just interject on that Heidi too and Cliff mentioned this at the beginning you know when we talked about like sustainability it wasn't just like the fiscal models and like the financial models we were also looking to other organizations to ask questions about their governance structure do they have you know memorandums of understanding how do they actually solidify that partnership so all these kind of pieces went kind of hand in hand also figuring out how do we keep paying for this in the long term. Yeah yeah it's almost similar to data curation in which it was like a little bit abstract in some ways and like no this is literally what you'll have to do and this is literally you know how much how much it takes. And in terms of you know we so we engaged a panel and so that included a variety of academic institutions of different scopes and sizes and then also some data curation organizations completely outside of you know academic libraries to try and get a balance in terms of what we were trying to achieve. We also did a request for proposals for consultants and we ended up which is you know experience all in of itself and then we ended up working with Lyrisis they have a report that's available if you'd like to read it and they did end up sort of recommending or coming out with three different models for us to consider one was tiers but the idea that that could provide some broader representation one was kind of a stakeholder model which was more tightly aligned you know very very similar organizations and then the final one then was a fee for service. So I think Lisa let me maybe say a little bit more about that later unless you wanted to chime in now. No I can see more about that there yeah a couple more. Great so from there we had a bazillion conversations within our group we talked and talked and talked and talked and really tried to get to a consensus and figure out you know what was really best for us and what we could do going on now. We did end up with a membership model and we'll talk more about that for sure later and then basically you bite your fingers and you start the ask and you see what happens when when the rubber hits the road. Yeah and I can talk more about the rubber hitting the road piece of the show here. You know when I look back on our journey I observe that even though we did plan early on we did we actually had to change directions a couple times during the way so Heidi really mentioned like we looked at this fee for service model and in fact in our in our planning phase when we were really just thinking about the network and and building it out kind of on paper we thought like you know there's a lot of membership fatigue out there and all of the experts we're talking to are sort of warning us that it's really difficult to become yet another organization that you know goes hat in hand and asks for membership fees from a variety of institutions so we thought maybe we should really test out this this fee for service approach where perhaps we can package up curation and and really get end users to to pay for that and and help us sustain the data curation network. Of course once we started the implementation phase then we started to realize all of the real problems without approach at least for our particular you know service data curation so one thing we discovered is you know data curation in terms of the networked matchmaking type approach that we were using is actually very difficult. We share our curators across a group of institutions where you know Minnesota might have expertise in biological sciences and we can curate the biological data coming into Illinois while they might help us with our computer science resources or whatever. There's really not a lot of you know quantifiable like this is how much it costs each data set is going to take a widely variety you know a wide variety of different steps and and different expertise and we can't always guarantee all of these things are going to align and offer that as a fee for service at least not today. Data curation is also very professionalized work a lot of ethical components a lot of decision-making has to happen you know behind the scenes and there's really not a you know one-size-fits-all approach to how we do curation and that's something we actually have to teach in our workshops you know we take a very pragmatic approach to make data a little bit better we can't you know make the perfect data set so that also was kind of difficult to translate into a operationalized you know high quality service expectation for every single data curation event. We also realized and this is through a lot of our satisfaction surveys that we did on our own curators who are doing this work as a part of our implementation phase. They are really busy people and curation is not their only job all of our staff in the data curation network are research data management librarians and reproducibility specialists and software developers working on the repository so they they also do curation as a part of their job but this isn't the only thing they do so for them an exchange of data curation with a peer makes a lot of sense I'll do your biology data sets if you do my computer science data sets but doing that work for an end user where there is no exchange except for sustaining the network didn't really translate in value for our actual curators so that was you know a huge realization for us that really meant that this wasn't necessarily going to be the best approach. Finally just the logistics of accepting fee for services from end users in an academic institution is quite challenging um we we really did a lot of research on you know what would it actually take to set this up and a lot of the answers we found was well the DCN is going to have to become a non-profit organization and there's actually quite a lot of benefits for you know staying housed as a fiscal home at a university and and there's you know a lot of things that our university has been able to provide for us that we just weren't able or maybe willing to try to start doing like taxes and you know collecting the actual money and and all of the the oversight that needs to go to that yeah go for it I just audits like yeah exactly um so so we really uh decided that you know this this approach that we thought you know theoretically would really work for us and a lot of their literature and the research was really pointing us down this direction um was really just practically not a good fit for us right now given you know the unknown market for some of these end user services so we really had to look inward and and say what is going to work for us our current membership right now and um you know for that and you can go to the next slide Heidi um we discovered that a membership model is actually going to be the best approach um and we might have to be able to scale up later on to you know offering a wider variety of services to end users but right now we we do really have a very strong trust relationship built up amongst our partners and we want to continue um to you know expand on that so we are um creating three tiers of membership right now um one of them is that uh you know partner tier which is uh we're actually you know looking for new partners to join us but you know these are institutions that have curators who are also interested in sharing curation at this network to scale and and really trying to as Heidi already described wonderfully build out the the actual workflows and practices for how we can do this in our institutions the other tier you know is completely untested and and that's a tier that we're hearing people are interested in um that uh you know you're just getting started with curation you might not even have a data curator on staff but this is an area that you'd really like to move into where you see a need to move into but you need to learn more and you need to learn you know from a network of experts or who are already kind of doing this so that's where imagine you know where it might be a different kind of involvement and we'd really like to beta test what that actually might look like uh in this this transition year and then finally um we do still offer a lot of our um educational workshops uh and we see a real value in ensuring that you know we're just preparing our curator community um to tackle some of these problems so we want to continue to do that and and we're really looking to um you know get support to teach these workshops and that's what that that ambassador level was for um in the future we need to look for other ways to continue to engage but maybe individuals uh there are a lot of individuals who work in institutions that may not be at that level to you know partner in this this membership model who who are also just looking to get involved in the community and we just we're trying to figure out how to create that opportunity for them and then we definitely recognize that the current DCM members are maybe large R1 institutions and certainly there are a lot of opportunities to engage with a wider variety of institutions and we want to ensure that we are you know really making a welcoming and inclusive community for for everyone so those are the two kind of future areas that we'd like to look to um so what's great uh about this this current uh testing of this this new membership model is we actually got 11 of our 12 institutions to sign on as partners um and and right what that means right now is uh we're sharing all the central costs and that comes out to $10,000 per institution plus the in-kind donation of the curator expertise to the network um we also have been receiving interest from others to do beta testing at those different tiers um and and we we just really appreciated the support that we we heard from Cliff and uh wanted to highlight that um we really are uh really striving to to kind of meet these expectations that we are trying to test out a radical collaboration for doing this kind of work in in academic libraries and it's it's certainly not hard but it's it's possible I'm sorry it is hard but it's it's also possible and um we we really are trying to you know learn by doing I guess is is what we're finding out is is really the only way to try to do some of these sustainability um uh approaches so I think I turn it back over to you Heidi yeah yeah so there's I mean the things that are great or there's a lot of enthusiasm and um it by and large it's working so that's a really terrific part of it we do feel the pains of the things that aren't so great about what we're trying to do right now uh first and foremost we are faffling our campuses so uh Lisa can save me a little bit more from the fiscal agent uh perspective but I'll just say even as one of the partners so I go to them with the draft membership agreement and they totally don't get the idea that we're trying to share staff and try to share our time they're like what are you giving away for and you're like no it's a swap it's a swap I don't know how many times I use the word swap you know in that in that conversation and we have a great grant and contracts person it's it's terrific it's just not at all the way that they're they're used to thinking and also they're used to thinking about you know sort of liabilities and those sorts of things so you come to it and they're like oh don't agree to this don't say this don't don't promise this don't promise these things but make them promise it it was like oh no no no we need we need everybody to agree to be obligated to these things otherwise I can't depend on Michigan and Cornell and Minnesota to do these things like we have to be responsible to each other so that was really kind of going against uh you know a grain in and of itself and to try and explain um to a lot of different people like what we're trying to do and what it means to us Lisa do you want to say anything about the fiscal home play no I might need some therapy you know like that this is just a really difficult experience like setting up these agreements and pushing it through our legal counsel it's like it's it's pretty um yeah it's it's not what I've been trying to do right you know and and we have a lot of structures that are universities in place to help us through these but they're really not used to um collaborating with our peers like this so it's been it's been a struggle yeah and that's been uh fascinating uh also in terms of one thing that's not so great is losing out on talent so say we have you know an organization that's in the data curation network and they have to exit or they were never able to come in to begin with so you know in one case maybe we only were thin on our curators for example and if that organization left then there goes our our curator so that's sort of like there's a loss of talent for us and then it's also a loss of um you know them being able to engage with us so that's been something that's an awkward about this um about this sort of model um also as I mentioned this sort of pre-emptive sustainability planning so this idea that we're you know trying to market our ice cream and Bessie's not a twinkle in anybody's eye yet we're really trying to figure out what we're doing which means that we've been pivoting a lot and we've also been then forced to make decisions that may not be the right thing long term they might need to be expected they probably will have to evolve it's not to say that you know it's not good that we were forced to make decisions because the grant's ending so we did need to do that but it was does mean that things aren't as fixed as um you know we think that they they are and one thing that I you know kind of have noticed is happening is like once you put something on a website or once you say it's one way it really fixes in people's head that that's the way it is but we really are still trying to figure out what how do we continue to tweak this um so that it works best for what we're trying to do and also the the people that we're trying to do it with and then yeah uh I think Lisa just alluded to this maybe a little bit but we're not right we're also not sales salespeople uh this is not our our natural inclination so this means and we didn't have some cohort of you know smooth talking people in the data curation network that we just you know banded together to go out and you know give you know schnagy slides and pitches to people it was just us going back to our administrations and you know some people are more comfortable with that than others and you know that can be awkward and then it's also the idea that it's also hard for administrators so you've got a bazillion different you know things that want to be funded and you've got this amount of time and you're having to try and tease out and maybe extrapolate a little bit you know what is the value so that's one thing that I think we'd struggle with a little bit too well you also mentioned Heidi what is the value I mean I remember at one point we were like googling like value proposition so we had a lot of really strong learning curve to really tackle some of these sustainability issues yeah market analysis okay what is that again you know these were just things that you know even with the consultant they were still hard kind of in the similar way of their grants and contracts there's a little bit hard for us to wrap our brains in them um so uh yeah so just covered uh wrapping up a little bit here uh so it really has come down to you know when we think about some sort of takeaways that you know we thought would be useful for the people really it does take an enormous amount of effort to try and really hit all the points that you'd want to do and it really does take a take a lot of time um so those are sorts of things and then really a lot of this has also kind of really come down to to values and there are different values for for different people of course and I had found this quote um from Paul Hawken who is actually um an an environmental sustainability activist but it really spoke to me about this idea that the first rule is to align with your natural forces or at least not to find them and I think if you had shown me this quote at the very beginning I'd been like yeah yeah yeah that's what we're doing you know our natural forces is to bind together and then you know be able to do this thing and hadn't actually really thought about these other sorts of natural forces that are in play you know first of all you know this idea of how our universities are structured to work they are individual universities that are set up to value themselves of course we understood that but we didn't really think about how that was going to apply and apply to the actions and the actual work and the kind of things that we were going to have to do in terms of moving forward and the amount of effort that it would take to you know really try to get over those hurdles you know within our own universities and then this also this idea that you know um I think almost everybody on this is going to be part of academia or at least closely aligned if not you know and particularly those libraries we don't pitch that's not what we're we're help we want to help that is the entire ethos of why we're here so that's one thing too where we've really kind of struggled around you know we we can do this in certain ways but then who do we leave behind or how do we not help the rest of the community so that's one area where we've really been really continue to to push on and to try and think through so just a few maybe final take-homes then for the DCN specifically just to know that particularly because of the timing and again we're glad we were pushed but because of that timing we did we are still testing and we had to make decisions for what to try now and particularly for ways to maintain but we do expect that will evolve and then just for sort of for this you know concept of sustainability and moving from a grant into an organization is looking out for all of the natural forces not just the ones that that seem most obvious to you they like Lisa said they're not insurmountable but they will feel a little very uncomfortable and they will just really take a lot of time and energy more than you think that they they will so I think at least me particular I felt you know sort of blindsided by by some of that and we worked it out it's been going okay but I would have wanted to hear that presentation so I was prepared so that's a message for you so finally just you know thanks to you for for your interest in attending and we'll take some questions in a few minutes here it's certainly our thanks to everyone for contributing to the data curation network and you know Tim and Claire again for their work on the sustainability projects our thanks to Josh Greenberg who at Sloan who pushed us you know very early to start this so I think it would have been very easy to push off and push off and push off until it was way too late if it hadn't been built in so so much to the to the grant process as it was and then so there's our website that our sustainability plan is available so under a bow under publications and I can actually put in the link here in a few minutes too if you'd like to take a closer closer look at it any closing thoughts you want to say before we open it up please I guess I would just add that you know we we ultimately we changed our minds about sustainability we thought we could sustain ourselves one way and we we changed based on how we felt as individuals in this collaboration and I think that that's a good thing I think you do have to stay true to like your your values and and we value our people and how our individuals feel about the work that they're doing we couldn't collaborate otherwise so our sustainability model really had to reflect how our individuals felt about this work and hopefully that'll work out for us but I guess it's okay to change change your mind about sustainability thank you uh thanks Heidi thank you Lisa uh wonderful talk so interesting and really appreciate your um your your honest um description of the the the challenges that you faced and and how you were called to bring certain kinds of skills to bear on a thorny problem with the situation that wasn't necessarily part of what you were used to to dealing with I think we can all relate to that and it was great to hear about it um I do want to invite our attendees to please share some questions and comments with us we already have a few there and I'm going to read them now but please um feel free to do so in the in the q and a box and I will read them aloud for Lisa and Heidi uh you also have the option of raising your hand and I'll be happy to unmute you and um you can rate you can ask your question um allowed if you like so I'll go ahead and begin with a question that came in through the chat um this may be a question for another talk but do the faculty or researchers have parallel concerns to the grants offices about sharing their data with people that they don't know um I can take that one if that's okay Heidi um actually we built our our DCN our data curation network workflow to address that very problem we actually don't share data with our institutions that isn't already going into a public access data repository so all of the data that we curate is meant for public access um and we also talk to our researchers about this in different ways um each local institution has uh has the ability to you know very explicitly explain to their researchers that someone outside of the organization may be curating their data but even when we do that um we you know the data is already going to be publicly available anyway so we really do try to um let the local institution handle that and we want the local institution to have all of that relationship building um aspect as much as they need so for example at Minnesota when I when I get something curated by the network I'll I'll just say you know our python data curator is looking at this and that python data curator might be at Illinois or Penn State so um yeah we we really do pay attention to that very much yeah and that's another area too where I think we've had to be pretty flexible because again different universities actually work in a little bit different ways the way that they get their own funding is a little bit different um so we've had to be you know those are ways that we had to be flexible in terms of you know determining how the network operated at Illinois we say hey we want to send this to the data curation network this is what it is it's actually kind of nice marketing for that for the data curation network uh and then so we give them you know the opportunity for some reason they wouldn't feel comfortable but as this there all of it is is meant to be great thank you and thanks Monica for the question we also got a question in from Emily who writes I must admit that I'm a little concerned about another membership model in the library space currently I sit on a few boards and have worked in the library nonprofit space and I have seen memberships drop in all of those organizations I often call it the new shiny thing syndrome organizations tend to join early on but then when a few institutions pull membership there's often a spiral is there an alternate plan if membership drops um well first I just want to acknowledge Emily yes that we're we're afraid of that too we didn't really go this direction maybe in some ways because we knew that this was a problem but it's tractable sorry well we're also trying to launch a new membership model in covid um that's also we didn't mention that but that's also kind of the other major factor that we've been struggling with um so we're really excited that we've been able to come this far I think what what we're trying to keep in mind is that we're not we're not just another membership organization I guess maybe we're just lying to ourselves but we really are um sharing our staff in a really radical way um so so it yes you know data curation is a kind of a newer shinier thing um but we're doing it in such a way that we we really are becoming interdependent on one another um it we're really uh we're making our ties closer as we work together so um at least it's our thought that our memberships will actually pull people together um in ways that will make us you know very uh very dependent on one mother what do you think Heidi yeah I I think that's exactly right just to to be explicit we have thought of other things and we you know sort of tear it paired it down in terms of like well what if this didn't happen or this and there are people pull out and so what ends up happening is that you have a reduction in what you can offer or you pivot really kind of dramatically you know so do we no longer actually share our staff do we just select channel so you know you have to end up really changing your mission really quite a bit depending on how that goes so you know we've got our eyes wide open about that and um yeah we were grateful and and delighted that in COVID you know we have been able you've been able to do this as well because it's absolutely on our minds that um you know that there is that put to and right now I mean we've got 46 data curators in our network um you know and for the $10,000 that it costs for membership that's much more uh affordable than trying to hire even just one more data curator for our library so we really are trying to um show that this this is a way of collaborating it's not just a membership to another organization it's it's really just the the cost of collaborating in this radical way thank you yeah thank and thank you thank you Emily um and thank you for for addressing that concern and Emily uh just chats um I appreciate the thought you've put into this and that you're doing this in in COVID so um and I just wanted to comment also along those same lines um with respect to membership inquiries uh we did we we did receive a private chat prior to somebody having to leave this webinar um asking the question about um joining opportunities membership opportunities and so what is and forgive me if I missed that during your presentation but if someone does is interested in joining what's the process and how can they do that yeah and we intentionally did not make this a commercial but thank you for asking I'll most certainly be happy to share that information um we we do have a membership application that's open uh through the end of April um we will be reviewing applications based on the members um that are interested in joining based on the expertise that they bring to be honest it's it's not just about the fee we we really want to grow our network in a way that fills maybe some of the domain expertise that we may be lacking um or the the file formats for for curators who can curate you know particular file formats um and so there's actually a list of preferred you know areas where we'd really like to add additional expertise and partners to our network um we're also interested in learning or hearing from partners that are different from our own um that that aren't just maybe our ones but are maybe um representing institutions that are just not like ours and will bring additional you know diversity and a variety of other concerns or interests to the group so that we can um really grow in a way that's that's going to be um you know more uh useful to the broader community great thank you Lisa um I also just wanted to be sure that everyone had noticed the comment from Carl Benedict um when you were writing about the process of planning for sustainability um and you know how much time and energy that took and when it was time you still couldn't believe it was actually time and Carl commented um that he's connected to a couple of projects were two plus years out from the end of the project was still not early enough so clearly that's a universal experience or or very common uh we do I'm sorry go ahead so the really hard thing about that is like you're trying to do market research but you haven't actually pinned down exactly what you're doing yet because you're trying to tweak the network to make sure it works so that's you know part of that is why people push it off because they're not we're not sure what they're selling and we don't want to sell um so that's that's really that challenge there is is trying to figure out how to how to work in the context of figuring out sustainability while you're still kind of jiggling around yeah very true very true thank you um Carl likes the the ice cream shop cow metaphor which was a good one all right well we we um we have we have some more time to chat with our panelists and again we're so grateful for them uh for coming to CNI to talk to us about their their project and this this process we are so grateful to all of our attendees for making time uh to be with us here um as I see that we don't have um any more questions in the Q&A I'm going to go ahead and turn off the recording um but I invite any attendees who would like to remain with us here and sort of approach the podium um ask questions uh have a chat with our presenters please feel free to do so otherwise wish you all a great rest of your day hope to see you back at our next session at CNI which will happen in about 45 minutes or in one of our other sessions in the next um a couple of weeks take care everyone bye bye thank you everybody