Welcome to The Sustainability Sandbox blog series! The Alexandria Archive Institute and Open Context advocate for data sharing, data literacy, open access, and community collaborations. In this series, we share the story of our journey to identify and develop digital data management, public engagement, and data literacy projects with potential partner institutions.
There’s been a lot of moving and shaking over at The Alexandria Archive Institute and Open Context during the past few months. We’ve got our hands full developing ‘digital data stories’ and marshaling resources from existing online museum creations. But we’re also eager to share the parts of our ongoing work that usually take place behind closed doors (or screens nowadays). These include our workflows and recommended best practices; our blueprint for sustainability and the models that have helped to get us there; an honest assessment of our successes and a critical reflection on our failures. For too many projects, the creation of these kinds of resources, if supported at all, is an afterthought. For us, publishing these kinds of resources is a priority.
To that end, The Sustainability Sandbox blog series represents our commitment to transparency. Over the next few years, we’ll weigh in on some of the big questions driving conversations about the role of digital engagement in academic circles and the cultural heritage community. How does the increasing demand for data literacy impact student learning objectives in the humanities and liberal arts? How can we balance our desire to develop customized projects with individual collaborators with our need to create scalable, open access templates? What is the relationship between contingent, temporary labor and the success of digital projects?
Throughout this process, we’re looking to build relationships with libraries, museums, educational organizations, and other cultural heritage groups. If you’d like to connect and discuss a potential collaboration, please e-mail us at contact@alexandriaarchive.org. We look forward to hearing from you!
