 Welcome everyone, thanks for joining us. I'm Cliff Lynch. I'm the director of the Coalition for Networked Information. And you've joined one of the project briefing sessions that is part of the final week of our CNI Spring 2020 virtual meeting. We are going to hear presentations from Jeremiah Trinidad-Christensen and Nancy Maron. And after they do their presentations, Diane Goldenberg-Hart will moderate questions and answers. There is a Q&A tool at the bottom of your screen, and please feel free to use that to pose questions at any point as they occur to you. You don't need to wait for the end of the prepared comments. I'd also direct your attention to the chat box. We'll be putting out a couple of useful URLs over the course of the presentation. And you can also use that for general commentary as you wish. So with that, let me just take a moment to introduce this presentation. And I have to say, I was so pleased to get this proposal. And I love the focus of it because it's very easy to talk in an extremely general way about the sustainability and preservability and preservation challenges involved in web-based digital scholarship. And often people tend to equate that to digital humanities. But as this example here illustrates, maps are really pervasive. And you see them in scientific digital work as well as digital humanities and social sciences. It's a really cross-cutting kind of concept. And it very concretely, I think, illustrates a number of the challenges at hand here. So I just was delighted to get this proposal, in this case, study in. And with that, there's really nothing more for me to do than to thank you again for joining us and to thank our presenters for sharing their insights with us and to say over to you, Jeremiah, I know you're going to start us off. Nice. Thank you very much, Cliff. And thanks for everybody for joining. So I'm going to kick it off and give a little bit of the backstory and help frame this and how all of this kind of came together. Back in about 2018, this is all related to what you're seeing on the screen right here with maps in. At Columbia, we work pretty closely with faculty researchers on various digital initiatives and projects. And something very common and typical as we see issues around sustainability, maintaining a balance with the project growth, resources needed for maintaining and archiving. And during this particular instance, faculty member that we work with pretty closely had worked with pretty closely over many years. Laura Kurgan, who's a professor of architecture in GSAP, which is the Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation, and Planning within Columbia University, is also the director for Center for Spatial Research. Came into a pretty unexpected problem. And that was maps and shutting down. Laura and Center for Spatial Research had lots of projects that they had up that relied on maps and integrating this particular piece into their projects and their work. And with this note of this thing coming down, it jeopardized a lot of those projects. So the folks from Center for Spatial Research came over to us within the libraries and asked if we could come up with a solution, help them fix this issue. Unfortunately, we're unable to really do much at that time. And especially under the quick timeframe that they needed, Center for Spatial Research, thankfully, was able to come up with a Band-Aid solution, a short-term solution. But what that did was open up conversations. We were able to work with each other, communicate, and start looking at the issue of sustainability for the projects as a whole. And especially this idea of relying on third-party solutions. In other words, were we devoting a lot of time to working on sustainability strategies with project leaders? What was all of that worth? Whether or not software projects that are built with various platforms, what happens when they become unavailable? So in response to this, at Columbia University, we put together a small team of folks. And that included two of our AULs. And that's Barbara Rockenbach and Rob Cartolano. Couple of our expert folks who work very closely with mapping software in general. And that's Mosair de Saoferreira and Alex Hill. And also in working closely with Laura Kurgan from the Center for Spatial Research to put together who helped inform us. And we put together a proposal for a Mellon Foundation grant, basically to better define and preserve and look at these sustainability issues around web-based digital mapping. And along those lines, I mean, this project itself it fit in pretty closely with our strategic thinking, especially around thinking through of creating manageable, sustainable, and scalable workflows and frameworks. So some of those projects, I mean, we were very fortunate to be able to apply and receive generous funding from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and to explore this topic further. Overall, aim of the grant was to explore and understand if the problem or aspects of the problem are unique to digital web-based mapping projects. And if so, what are some of the potential solutions that would help address the problem? We wanted to bring some of the actors and stakeholders together to discuss this and address the issue. In order to do this as part of the grant, we put together a small task force of roughly 25 people or so with a good mix of folks having familiarity with web mapping from a crater side, but also included experts in digital preservation within GIS, digital project management, drawn from libraries, museums, and had experience within both public and private institutions. The task force was brought together to help narrow and identify the problem, discuss beneficial solutions, think through viable options. And afterward, we came across essentially four different paths that we're going to be looking at a little bit later. But with that, we had to put together a second meeting to kind of narrow that down. As a smaller group of individuals, mostly drawn from that first group, but also included a few new folks that we had discovered and talked with along the way and to kind of help sketch everything out. So also included in that as part of the grant, we created a project inventory. And this was put together a project inventory survey. And this was in order to help us get a sense of the breadth of the digital web-based mapping projects to help us think about the potential solutions and apply to various existing projects. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Nancy. Thanks, Jeremiah. You might think that, given that there was a Mellon grant and the word map was in it, we might have actually had a definition for what a map is. And you might be wrong. That was something we actually worked on with the people who came to join us. Because even though we all toss that word around quite a lot, there are so many different ways that maps function and so many different things that they are used for and the reasons they are built, that we actually took a good chunk of our very first meeting together, just kicking around ideas of what we thought would be in and out of scope, particularly when we're thinking about the sustainability challenges. So kind of the nexus of scholarships, sustainability, digital, so what is a map? So what we did at the workshop was we had people split up in teams and they were each given postcards of these different mapping projects, which all at least have something that looks like points in space attached to an image. And we had folks work through questions. Does it feel like a map to you? Should this be in scope? So actually, we'll talk a little bit, I'll just give you a little bit of the flavor of what that conversation was and I'll tell you a little bit about where we ended up. So first of all, what is it showing? Who is it built for? How is it constructed? What was the purpose of it? Is it more dynamic, more static? And does it actually represent something that we would consider to be scholarly? And that was a pretty heated and interesting conversation because there was a lot of pushback about things that just looked like geographic representations. So there was a lot of debate about these things. Next slide. So one example is E-Bird. E-Bird is not a digital humanities project but is fairly well known in our world out of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. There's tons of ways to visualize the data that they've captured and that's sometimes manipulated in real time. There's tons of filtering. It's a citizen science project to understand migratory patterns of birds and frequencies of appearances of birds around the US and around the world. So because it had all those different factors and because of the ability to do different things within query at different ways, that passed the test but it almost didn't because at first people just felt maybe it was just a way to look at raw data. So again, just to share with you some of the flavor of the conversation. Next slide. This is from a different field. This is AfricaMap which shows the African continent with a zillion different ways to layer things on top of it. Looking at political boundaries, geographic boundaries, historical questions, historical maps, there's all kinds of things that you could do to this. So I thought for sure, everyone will think this is for sure in scope but it was a project that I believe hadn't been updated for quite a long time. So lots of people discussing it felt it shouldn't be in scope because dynamic, the functionality was interesting for layering but it felt very flat to them. It also felt outdated to them. But this led to a very interesting conversation of the value of someone having assembled all of these data layers that you could use. And so again, this led to our conversations about what is it that we would want to preserve or save about this? The actual interactive map might not be state of the art anymore but there's a lot of important information that's in here that was scholarly work. So maybe there is something that keeps this in scope. Next slide. So how about this? So the picture of the United States may not be that exciting. The base map that you see here, but this is a map out of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and LSU that shows a visualization of water levels for storm surge during hurricane. So is that in or out of scope? I mean, is it a scholarly question? Well, no, but it's actually a real world question. People use this to ask questions like, will my home be flooded? Do I need to move the emergency equipment a little bit to the left so that everything doesn't short out when the water comes ashore? So we talked about this too. What's scholarly about that? Well, there's teams of people who are developing a model that makes this possible. That's not scholarly work. It seems like it is. So that was the discussion around this. And the next slide. And then mapping Gothic France which has the word mapping in it but if you look at it, the biggest mappy kind of thing around it is just the site locator which allows you to decide which structure you'll be looking at. And then beyond that, there's beautiful kind of 3D images inside and all kinds of ways to observe the images that you've landed on. But this almost didn't pass the test if I'm right Jeremiah because people felt that it was simply a collection of images sitting on with pointers to a fixed place on a map. So in terms of being dynamic or static, people felt that the fact that it seemed so static maybe made it out of scope. And yet it's one of the first things that we looked at that actually uses the word map in its title. So what is a map? Next slide. So one more slide. There are, so kind of almost the easiest part are the components. So you can talk about, oh, do you just wanna come back? Like there's the base, the base map, the tile layer. You can talk about the actual geospatial data that goes into it. And you can talk about the code that makes it all interactive. But the conversation we had that got so interesting was that the things in scope were that it had to not just be digital but it had to be web-based and publicly available. And that's actually a pretty big deal. In other words, this wasn't just an independent project. These were intended for public use. People felt it was very important that there be some kind of scholarly work involved in adding value to otherwise what would have been just data points or points in space or in geography. People felt it was very important that similarly that it be something that could be queried in a range of ways. And that made it feel more comfortable again in the scholarly space is something we would actively want to worry about, sustaining. And that could be anything that could have to do with the different data layers or the functionality, the way you might be able to zoom in and manipulate things, filter things and view them in different ways. So in the end, almost everything we looked at ended up being in scope. And part of the reason was simply because the potential for what people can do with them, how wide ranging it is and the potential impact that they could have because they are being broadly viewed and they do cover so many disciplines, gave folks a kind of a more all embracing definition of what we would care about when we think about why we would undertake activities to sustain them and then what we would want to sustain. So I'll pass it back to Jeremiah to talk about why are mapping projects different as Cliff pointed out from other digital humanity projects that often have these challenges? Thank you. There are definitely a lot of aspects that align with digital web, with digital web based maps with issues surrounding digital project preservation. But through our discussion at the summit and the follow-up meeting, we discussed some key aspects that are unique to web mapping. And one of those aspects is this ad hoc mix of proprietary data, software and technology platforms that are often incorporated directly into the maps themselves. And because of that ad hoc nature, which can extend from the entire project to the individual components, it can be a bit problematic and make it unique. And one of those components that I'd like to talk about is the base map or that slippy map. And it's that background and this can be integral to the project itself in conveying the meaning and interpretation for the layers and the various interactive components. And those base maps are often hosted by third parties. And for those cases where it allows for customization, it's out of the control for the project itself and out of the decision-making aspect for those projects. And as in the case for the Center for Spatial Research and with maps in, it can have major impacts. Another note on that one too is that when the tile layer, the code, the attribute layers are entirely within a commercial environment without the ability to be able to create a copy or access the backend directly or it becomes even more problematic. And especially when thinking through those preservation strategies. So along those lines and in going back to the discussions that we had as a group, as part of that prep for the two-day summit that we held, we sent out a list of questions to everybody to try and get them to prep and get in the right mindset for what we're thinking and approaching each other. And this is one of the questions that we had asked and it's how important do you think the following factors are in terms of ensuring the long-term vitality of a web-based digital mapping project? As you can see, one of the things that comes up is, you know, not surprising, that's documentation. That is always, always key. It's also one of the more difficult aspects to create and maintain within the timeframe needed for projects and especially with meeting production deadlines. But what we found very interesting within this one too is looking a little bit further down the line here, third from the bottom, degree of control over data we rely on from external sources. And this is touching on those aspects around base maps and other components. So in here, as we started to meet, discuss and provide context to what we were talking about and shaping the overall focus, this became definitely a lot more clear and one area that we started put a lot more focus and concern into. And of course, you know, I was looking through those examples that Nancy was showing a moment ago. It doesn't always apply to every single project, especially those ones that display only points in a map. But for those projects where timestamps of the backend data is really important to the overall context or where there's added customization to the visual display of the tiles, then it becomes a crucial aspect when discussing the impact on projects and it's something that the overall group really did take a closer look at. And just to mention this one too, the project inventory that we did, this in part came about because of the talks and the input from the task force itself. We needed to get a sense if what we were discussing really was applicable. And what were the, what's the breadth of the digital web-based mapping projects that are out there? And especially in helping us to think through the solutions that we were discussing and applying them, could they be applied to existing real projects? So we got back 66 results for this one. It was pretty heavily weighed in the humanities. So we definitely have to do a push to gather more sources from other disciplines. We had folks in the room from other disciplines. So we know, we definitely know they're there. So it's one of the aspects that we're looking to do. The majority of the projects that were reported came from either the PIs or somebody directly involved in the projects, which is actually pretty nice to see. Most of those were active, but I'll say in going back through and checking the links before this talk, most are still active, thankfully, but there are a few that have started to go through some changes, some a little more gracefully than others. So it's, it was definitely interesting to see and especially in context with the talks that we're, or the talks that we had. We also did see a good mix of projects relying on both proprietary and open source components, which was very helpful and especially, because that's what we were discussing. Those are the solutions that we were looking at applying. So that was good to see. So I'm gonna turn it over to Nancy for the next part. Thanks, Jeremiah. So I don't know if everyone listening is having the same feeling I am, but after I showed you the range of kinds of things that are called maps, the number 66 looks like very low. And so we did this as a very kind of quick idea that came out of the workshop. Let's just throw a survey out there, see how much we can catch. But I have a hunch that if we make this broader, that inventory would grow very quickly and I would love to see what would come in, particularly since again, we're calling it a map and we practically didn't have anything on that list from the geosciences. So I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, the number is much bigger. What you're seeing in that list are really the ones that are kind of these more humanities and social science side ones. So we talked about this, the group came together, we came up with four different main directions of things that you could do that would make a significant difference. There were four ideas altogether. I'm gonna talk about two of them. The other two weren't bad. One of them had to do with advocacy, meaning could we put some harder data together so that you could make this case around, again, like the counts and the numbers or the number of people reached through mapping projects, which seemed to have a quite big audience and some of the projects anyway. And the other idea was something that would be cross-institutional. Are there elements of supporting people building maps that could be shared out among a range of partners? But these two really struck us as actionable quite quickly. And so I'll just outline them for you here. One is just, there's community understanding about how these things get built and what good practice looks like. As Jeremiah pointed out, what the risks are, how to build things to standards. And the thought is there could be some good practice shared. So there were two different directions that people felt would be helpful under that umbrella. So I think that's on the next slide. The first is actually kind of interesting. And that showed up in our survey right away among the participants, which is simply maybe people building them should self-document. We called them guidance narratives. And it would essentially look like a data management plan sustainability plan, and then a plan of progress where you track not just what you did and how you built it, but why you made certain choices you did at those times. And the group felt it would be valuable to have that and to socialize the idea of doing that. And frankly, it seems like that would be valuable to do actually for things that aren't just maps. But it would be a document that's a living document and helpful for people who come after. And then there's also this idea that these are kind of a niche of a kind of initiative. And it may be worth putting together information, for example, case studies around how they are built again so that people who are new to this can make good choices about it by watching how others have built them. So there are several ideas of what that community-wide research could look like. But the next is a little juicer. I wanna make sure I get to it before our time runs out. So the next slide is about infrastructure. And the notion of academy-owned infrastructure has been in my ear, I'm sure many of yours, around the scholarly communications landscape. And this feels like it could be another area where there could be some legs there. So the first idea is just straight-up preservation. There's a lot of participants from the library side and cultural heritage who just felt the first thing they needed a repository for certain aspects of these maps, if not the entire mapping project. Some people wanted the whole mapping project, some people just wanted its components separated out. But there are certainly questions about how to at least know that they existed and know how to find them and know how to find their parts. Their support for standards, in other words, again, I guess, towards best practice, just making sure that people are doing things in a way that is interoperable and standardized as much as possible. And then finally, are there things that we need to do that we haven't done yet? So as Jeremiah pointed out, everyone needs some kind of a base map. And there are different ways to source that, but is it worth having a set of, having a entire layer hosted someplace where we know that it will be available in perpetuity? And so one partner who had been part of the MAPSEN team said, well, we actually have like a whole vector tile database that covers the entire planet. You guys wanna copy of that? And there might be things like that where it might be valuable to have, just as a backup to make sure it's always accessible and free to people in the academy. And then the last piece is one that feels also very interesting to think about, which is in a mapping project, the intellectual work that goes into deciding what those data layers look like. They could be called points of interest, their data layers, they can be all sorts of things, whether they're images or writings or interpretations or just the points on a map that are based on whatever the question is you're asking, it's intellectual work. So in the same way that we talk about curating, preserving, hosting and particularly reusing data, the data sets and data layers and maps strike us as very reusable. And it seems like that could be another very interesting space to consider looking at building out so that they're easily findable for reuse. So I think that's where we end. The thought is to take this forward. The participants in the meetings wanted to keep thinking about this and to see which of those projects we might be able to actually take some action on in the near future. So my questions that people joining us is what are the challenges that you think or which of these solutions feel to you like would be the most impactful? And please let us know if you'd be interested in participating with us in our next conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. Thank you, Jeremiah. It was a very interesting chat and we really appreciate you're coming to CNI to share your work with us. And thank you to our attendees for being here today. I'd like to open the floor up for questions now or comments or responses to Nancy's call there for your ideas, opinions, expressions of interest so please feel free to type into the Q&A box or the chat box any comments or questions that you have at this time or if you feel more comfortable or interested in engaging directly with our speakers, if you just raise your virtual hand and that will signal to me that you wanna make a live comment or ask a question and I can unmute you so that you can go ahead and do that now. And while we are waiting for our questions to come in, I just want to remind everyone that we are indeed in the final stretch of CNI's spring 2020 virtual meeting, seems hard to believe. We've just got a few more days to go and I'm sharing with you there the direct link to our schedule for the rest of the meeting, plenty more webinars to come. I think we have maybe half a dozen still to go including a final wrap up session with Cliff Lynch which will take place Friday, Friday afternoon Eastern time so we hope you'll register and be a part of that. And with that I see we actually have a question from Cliff Lynch himself and Cliff asks, did you consider the role of gazetteers as part of a possible map support infrastructure? I will ask Jeremiah if he has thoughts on that. I'm not sure that we did. So in thinking through this, I mean we looked at this idea of points of interest and one of the members or one of the attendees had been working on a project that was basically collecting information that is very much gazetteer like and thinking through how can you turn this thing from a commercial entity into something that is available and accessible to all projects which includes not just access to the data itself but manipulation and ability to interact with it in ways and customize those in ways that you may not be able to do without extended coding knowledge. So that is something that we had potentially looked at. Okay, thank you, Jeremiah. Thanks Cliff for that question. So with that I will just say to our attendees if you would like to stick around after the session is over and thanks to our speakers Nancy, Jeremiah. Thank you so much for coming to CNI and sharing your work with us. And if I don't fare well to our attendees, hope to see you back at CNIC. Take care everyone. Thank you, always a pleasure.