Resources
By any standard, investment in an American
cyberinfrastructure is meager, as is U.S. research funding ingeneral.
According to Vinton Cerf and Harris N.
Miller in the Wall Street Journal (27 July 2005), “our totalnational spending on R&D is 2.7% of our GDP, and now ranks only
sixth in the world. The federal government's share of totalnational R&D spending has fallen from 66% in 1964 to 25%” in
2005.
In 2003 the Atkins report recommended annual
expenditures of $1 billion to create a cyberinfrastructure forscience and engineering; in 2005 funding specifically designated to
shared cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation (NSF)was about $123 million. On a per capita basis, Australia, Canada,
and the United Kingdom and other European countries have madeproportionally much greater investments in developing a broadly
accessible cyberinfrastructure than has the United States. Thecountries of the European Union arguably are far ahead of the
United States, especially in the humanities and social sciencesareas, given their recent investments in digital cultural heritage.
See, e.g., these recent publications, which
describe serious investment in humanities and social sciencescyberinfrastructure in the United Kingdom and the European Union:
British Academy, E-resources for Research in the Humanities andSocial Sciences—A British Academy Policy Review (2005)
(External Link) (20 May
2005).British Academy, Future Directions for Social Science: AResponse from the British Academy (2004)
(External Link) (20
May 2005).Guntram Geser and John Pereira, eds. (2004a). ResourceDiscovery Technologies for the Heritage Sector (Vol. 6): European
Commission.Guntram Geser and John Pereira, eds. (2004b). VirtualCommunities and Collaboration in the Heritage Sector (Vol. 5):
European Commission.J. M. Jose (2004). Personalization techniquesin information retrieval. Resource Discovery Technologies for the
Heritage Secto, ed. Guntram Geser and John Pereira, EuropeanCommission. DigiCULT Thematic Issue 6.S. Ross, M. Donnelly, and M.
Dobreva (2004). Emerging Technologies for the Cultural andScientific Heritage Sector (Vol. 2): European Commission.S. Ross,
M. Donnelly, M. Dobreva, D. Abbott, A. McHugh, and A. Rusbridge(2005). Core Technologies for the Cultural and Scientific Heritage
Sector (Vol. 3): European Commission.British Academy, 'That FullComplement of Riches': The Contribution of the Arts, Humanities,
and Social Sciences to the Nation's Wealth (2004)
(External Link) (23
Aug. 2005).
One example of the kind of resource we need to
develop here in the United States is the UK Data Archive, a “centreof expertise in data acquisition, preservation, dissemination and
promotion and . . . curator of the largest collection of digitaldata in the social sciences and humanities in the UK.” The Data
Archive is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council(ESRC), the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the
Higher Education Funding Councils, and the University of Essex.
