Infrastructure Working Group

The Infrastructure Working Group is a standing body of the South Asia Open Archives, reporting to the SAOA Executive Board and working in close consultation with the SAOA Program Coordinator and other Working Groups.

Members of the Infrastructure Working Group:

R. Prakash, Roja Muthiah Research Library (chair)

David Faust, University of Minnesota

Adnan Malik, University of California, Berkeley

Jef Pierce, University of Pennsylvania

Mary Rader, University of Texas at Austin

Purpose:

The Infrastructure Working Group provides recommendations to the Executive Board on all matters associated with the supporting technological framework of the SAOA. These include, but are not limited to: 

  • Administration, staffing, and strategic partnerships
  • Ongoing support for process improvements, standards updates, and SAOA site enhancements
  • Standards for digitization and metadata, the initiative's SAOA’s web presence, and intellectual property rights associated with resources presented through SAOA
  • Preservation archive for long term storage
  • Project-oriented work, such as quality control and addressing questions regarding digitization and ingest
  • Strategic planning related to changing technologies and emerging infrastructure needs, for example, support for new formats/data here (images, data sets, archival material, etc.)

Rationale:

The Infrastructure Working Group contributes to the permanent framework underlying SAOA activities. It participates in shaping the vision of SAOA as the initiative grows and develops over time.

Membership:

The Infrastructure Working Group is composed of at least three members from SAOA member institutions. At least one member will be from the Executive Board and that member will serve as the Working Group Chair or Co-Chair. The SAOA Program Coordinator participates in meetings of the Working Group. The term of service on the Working Group is one year and members are encouraged to renew their term of service.

Tasks, Timelines, and Deliverables:

Tasks, timelines, and deliverables for the Working Group are typically recommended by the Executive Board. The Working Group may also propose tasks within its purpose that contribute to the SAOA mission.

Reporting:

The Infrastructure Working Group reports to the Executive Board on a monthly basis and more often if requested. The Executive Board will be responsible for reporting recommendations by the Working Group to the SAOA membership.

Updated on September 14, 2020

Featured: Unique Urdu and Hindi Collection

Prof. Robert Phillips, lecturer for the Program in South Asian Studies at Princeton University, teaches courses in Hindi-Urdu and South Asian Studies, and has used both South Asia Materials Project (SAMP) and CRL resources to support different research, writing, and teaching projects.

Accessing Āmukha in SAMP’s holdings offered an opportunity to incorporate the crucial - but often less-collected - genre of the little magazine into his research on Hindi modernism and a subsequent conference presentation.