Infrastructure is largely invisible, reliable, and uncontroversial, because services are maintained and supported by a large, well-funded and well-staffed consortium. Generally, things go smoothly and, when they don’t, the ‘magic elves’ of the consortium sort it out quickly. Funding is sustained, rather than project based, through national and transnational public investment and organisational membership, based on a formula which considers the size and income of each participating institution. There are established mechanisms for larger organisations to support smaller ones through representation in infrastructure decision-making groups, partnership working, and the sharing of expertise. Support is available to non-members through open resources and the collective sharing of good practice. The consortium hosts popular apprenticeship and fellowship schemes which receive government funding. These provide training, hands-on digital cultural heritage project experience, and continuing professional development to arts and humanities scholars and GLAM professionals, with experts joining the team for fixed fellowship periods to complement the expertise of the core staff and help support projects. However, new ideas are not always welcome, which has led to a newly-formed offshoot group agitating for the consortium’s most recent strategy to be overturned at the next general meeting.
Links
Infrastructure Futures for Digital Cultural Heritage (project page)