 | please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
Hey everyone, I just wanted to run a couple questions on the FAQ by the class. You can read the whole thing in block 6, at the bottom of the page. #11 Who owns the ODBS portal/promotional materials/etc.? The community does! This site and its associated products have been created for aboriginal communities, the project's Northern partners and those who will be using the service in any way. In short, ODBS users = ODBS owners.How do you all feel about this answer? I am thinking of OCAP principles and do not see why anyone other than participating communities should have ownership of the service. #13 What will the future involvement of i-school students be? We've talked about this in class, but the future of the project has been pretty speculative... It would be nice to have an answer and a committment for this question in the FAQ. e.g. if someone visits this Moodle in the summer or fall semester, and needs to contact someone, who should they go to? Brian and Angie? Our course instructors? One of us?... Thanks for reading! |
 | Re: please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
I wonder, if everything is owned by the community, does this mean we should be asking permission to use it? Who exactly is the community? Is there anyone who is not the community? Just some things I've been thinking about... |
 | Re: please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
Dominika ... I am not clear about what you are talking about here. What is meant by the statement "everything is owned by the community"? Where did that come from? What are you thinking that requires "asking permission to use"? Whenever I think of or speak about "a community", I am usually referencing a physical environment with a geographic location. So whoever is part of that community is usually located there. Sometimes when I see these types of questions, it seems to me that people are getting off track here by making things a little too complicated. I vote that you try to keep it as simple as possible to avoid getting too hung up on worrying too much about what others might think. Brian |
 | Re: please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
If the system is communally owned, doesn't that mean that no one needs to ask permission? Asking permission implies the person you're asking has "ownership" and you don't. So let's say we define the "community" as anyone who chooses to use the ODBS. We're designing it for a particular set of northern FN communities, but shouldn't someone from Australia or the Netherlands or South America be able to jump on the portal and download content? There are Indigenous people all over the world. Once the portal makes it to the interweb it'll be pretty hard to tell they're not allowed to contribute. Maybe things get trickier when you consider who gets to create and upload content - and who has admin rights to the portal. In the end, we probably don't need to waste our time trying to decide who's in and who's out. The community will define itself. You come up with funny questions, D... |
| Re: please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
Thanks Mark, I think you've managed to articlulate my points better than I did! Just a few things to add: I was problematizing the statement Erica proposed be used in the FAQ-- that the OBDS is owned by FN communities, K-net and anyone else using the service. The word ownership is indeed a tricky one. What exactly does it entail? Does it mean that if any person wished to add, remove or change a part of the ODBS moodle or any other part, they could do so? If Knet should decide sometime that the server space is needed for another reason, would they be able to do what they wished with the created content in the ODBS? What about those who created the ODBS? Do they have a say in how it will be managed? As for who the community is, if it is a physical environment as Brian says, then are there any boundaries? Does that mean that everyone in Ontario owns the ODBS? Canada? The world? Mark, I agree that the community will define itself-- I see the community as anyone (regardless of affiliation or geography), who wants to take an interest in the project. Obviously, it is very unlikely that we will have to deal with such controversies in this project. I agree that getting people interested is more important than worrying about who to exclude, and that wasn't in my line of thinking. As a person who enjoys critical engagement, these questions were something that came up in my thinking. I think it is important to share these thoughts-- it does stimulate the exchange of ideas and uncover assumptions, no? |
| Re: please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I was working under the assumption that everything we publish here is K-Net's (unlike what we publish on Sakai) and that they have indeed, granted us permission to use their server space and resources. This is how things work in other discussion boards where site admin (e.g. moderators and site owners) usually retain the right to override user's ownership to edit and remove content etc. Site admin also retains the right to control access to content. What about those who created the ODBS? Do they have a say in how it will be managed? In this regard, I think non-users of the system could have an advisory role, or have a role of offering skills/resources, but not a managerial one. I don't think it makes sense for outsiders to manage or even co-manage a grass-roots, on the ground project, that ideally, would be tailored to a specific community by community leaders. |
| Re: please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
Erica ... concerning the question "What will the future involvement of i-school students be?" ... The question made me wonder if this team of i-school students feels the ODBS work is complete. If the answer is yes, then great ... there is no more work to be done. I suspect the answer would be no. So then the challenge becomes identifying what work remains to be completed by future i-school students who have the opportunity to work on this ODBS initiative. Completing a self evaluation of what was completed and what remains to be completed and then documenting these tasks with your lessons learned (what worked, what would you do differently, what did not work, etc) might be a great exercise for everyone involved in this work. Maybe your contributions will help shape future courses and tasks to be completed that will help establish the ODBS initiative in all First Nations across the region. Brian |
| Re: please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
Thanks for your input Brian. Our class is now working on a final report that is basically the self evaluation exercise you have described. Perhaps it would be good if we could upload those reports on this site, in lieu of any formal plans for the future of the project. |
 | Re: please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
Here's my take on things, which is not so far from what everyone has said so far: 1. I think it is sufficient to say that what we create is owned by the project participants, and anyone involved (either as the end-user, or as the creators) should have access to any information that they want. Basically, an opened-access policy to all parties involved. We don't have anything to hide between project members, or between community users and the service creator/providers. The only thing we have to guard against is leaking out collected personal information to those that want to collect them for reasons that are contrary to the spirit within which the information was gathered. 2. It's a good question, but do we really need to answer this now? This question perhaps should not be in the FAQ, because once a 'continuation plan' has been established, it would be a different question, so perhaps we should take it out of the FAQ, and keep it in the back burner for another few weeks. |
| Re: please help out w/the odbs FAQ |
|
1) I think the open access model is a good one for this project, thanks for the suggestion. It also seems that many other class members support this model? 2) As I mentioned to Brian above, perhaps we could publish our final reports here to address the second question. |
| response from Prof Caidi |
|
Prof Caidi emailed to say she is having problems logging onto Moodle, so I am posting her feedback on the FAQ so everyone understands how I have edited it: - "The community does! This site and its associated products have been created for aboriginal communities" ADD "for AND WITH Aboriginal communities" to the sentence. In the list of sponsors, at the end, remove "Internet Archives". They have never officially jumped on the bandwagon for this project. We can always include them later, if they wish. The equipment belongs to the UT Libraries, and if you want, we can create a "Thank You" or "Acknowledgments" section on the Moodle where we can thank individuals like Brian B., Gabe Juszel, Lisa, etc. As for committing to sending a copy of the books to folks. I am wondering if it is not too premature, esp. given that there is no web portal yet for people to "play" with the system in the first place. Providing pix of the book is already a good indication + the multimedia experience and the video will give the audience a good sense of what we are talking about. In other words, I would provide the ondemandbookservice@gmail.com email as a contact point, but I don't know if it is ncessary at this point to raise the point you mentioned. |