0.14 The evia project: many challenges, some solutions

image -->

My first task is to extend congratulations to the EVIA team on its outstanding work over the last nine years. Inevitably, the report (summarized in Annex 1) can only hint at the range and quality of material on the project website—and here I refer not only to the research components themselves (both recordings and metadata) but also to ancillary documentation about, among other things, cataloging and documentation, pedagogical applications, software development, and intellectual property and ethical issues. The Annotation Guide (i.e., “Part III: Annotator’s Workbench User’s Manual”), which is available on the website, is a major achievement in its own right quite apart from the body of digitized video material forming the core of the project. I am intrigued by the content and manner of presentation of the annotations; as I indicate below, there is considerable potential for EVIA’s annotation methodology to be applied to at least one research area which has suffered from intractable conceptual and presentational problems. The preservation of video material which would otherwise be threatened is of course commendable, as is the commitment to providing access to the material for educational purposes notwithstanding the legal and ethical challenges cited in the report.

Despite these positive reactions, I had some nagging doubts when reading the report about the project as it stands and how it will develop in future. I therefore present the following questions as a prelude to discussion, in some cases taking a devil’s advocate position:

Funding

• Is the scope of the project realistic without ongoing funding along the lines of the c. $4 million received since 2001, and/or without major changes in key elements of the project design including the peer-review process (see below)?
• To put it differently, is EVIA in danger of becoming a victim of its own success by creating a monolithic enterprise requiring huge direct grants (which of course can never be counted on) in order to survive, let alone flourish?

Value for money etc.

• Is the high level of expenditure justified in terms of the achievements to date (with only seventy hours of annotated video currently available), the potential for future development within existing constraints, the status accorded (or not) to project participants as a result of their work, and so on?
• In other words, to what extent has “value for money” been assured, and according to what measures?
• What plans exist for delivering the remaining c.1,100 hours of material?

Financial sustainability

• Will the generation of income through associated funded research projects alone be sufficient to allow for appropriate maintenance and updating of both existing and envisaged content, alongside the content created by the collaborative projects in question? (There is discussion about how the infrastructure will be maintained and developed, but relatively little on the sustainability issues surrounding content.)
• More generally, is the plan for financial sustainability sketched in the report sufficiently comprehensive and robust?