Open Science and Computing Infrastructure in the Digital Humanities of the Global South
Funding Area: Critical shared infrastructure / Infraestructura compartida critica
Problem Statement: We have two small computational infrastructures installed in two units of Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP, a public institution of Brazilian education). In this infrastructure we use proxmox to provide virtual machines that allow us to provide a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), among other services, to professors and undergraduate and graduate students (we will call it the unespiana community). However, the provision of this computational infrastructure is not universalized in these two units and these two infrastructures are not properly integrated. Our objective with this funding is: (1) to universalize and integrate access for the entire Unespian community of the two units; (2) increase the direct involvement of the unespiana community in the management, maintenance and documentation of our computational cluster; (3) Implement microservices - optimize processing as well as storage and availability of available databases; (4) Implement monitoring and observability tools. Our idea is to encourage greater involvement of people linked to the Humanities and Social Sciences both in the use and management of computational infrastructure and open source data, taking into account the limitations, challenges and possibilities of an open science made from the global south.
Proposed Activities: (1) Implement CEPH in the proxmox cluster; firewall review/adjustment (we currently use pfsense); review/adjustment of the identity management system (we currently use freeIPA); We estimate this step in two months;(2) Implement microservices. Our initial idea is to use rancher to manage the microservices and integrate the computational infrastructure of the two units; We estimate this stage in four months; (3) Implement monitoring and observability tools. We estimate this stage in two months; (4) Management of computing and data infrastructure. We estimate this stage in 10 months. Our idea is that this project lasts between 12 and 18 months and we believe that this item is the most important, as it concerns the search for greater involvement of people from the unespiana community (we can evaluate opening beyond it) in the process of maintenance, documentation and expansion of computing infrastructure. We will seek to intensify this process in the first few months. We have in our team people with good basic fundamentals about these technologies and willing to deepen their knowledge in them as well as help in the training of other members (current and future) of the team; Regarding the resources, we intend to use them, mainly, to remunerate the people involved in the project and for some pieces for the computational cluster.
Openness: The idea is to work on two work fronts: one work front is aimed at the unespiana community, here we intend to gradually universalize access: first for the approximately 400 undergraduate students of the international relations course (UNESP, Franca campus) and 150 researchers (professors, graduate students) from IPPRI/UNESP (UNESP campus São Paulo, capital); subsequently universalize for the approximately 1,900 students at UNESP, Franca campus; And another work front is aimed at the community in general, in which we will seek to make the entire implementation process as open as possible through open documentation in text and video as well as workshops for those interested in implementing something similar to what the project proposes.
Challenges: Among the challenges we can highlight two that are also the objectives that this project aims to achieve: The first disrespect the integration of two computational infrastructures of two units of a public institution and managed, fundamentally, by people linked to the digital humanities. The second challenge concerns the involvement of students and professors in the management, maintenance and expansion of an open computational and data infrastructure.
Neglectedness: All the physical infrastructure we have (networks, servers, workstations, storage, among others) was financed through resources provided by the Brazilian Federal Government (CNPq, CAPES) or the State of São Paulo (UNESP, FAPESP). However, at this time we do not have funding from these sources (we are submitting requests). In addition, in general, such financing covers more of our equipment needs and places many restrictions on financing other important fronts for sustaining projects such as the one proposed.
Success: We believe that progress or retreat in relation to the objectives indicated in the item “Problem Statement” and in “Proposed Activities” are good indicators for evaluating the progress of the project and making the necessary adjustments for it to be successful. In addition, we may do the “Reporting and progress” indicated in this “Call for proposals” or something similar in a public way as both a way to encourage other groups and also to further minimize possible setbacks.
Total Budget: 16850
Budget File: pdf
Affiliations: Yes, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP, a public institution of Brazilian education)
LMIE Carveout: Yes. The team, the institution and the entire infrastructure are based in Brazil. In addition, this project aims to help the adoption of both open source and open science across the global south.
Team Skills: The first involvement of team members with information technology issues occurred around the beginning of the 2000s with the digitization of the Brazilian Foreign Policy Journal. Tal Hemeroteca is a selection of almost 30,000 news items from newspapers that were digitized, post-processed (treatment and OCR) and made publicly available (https://hemerotecapeb.lantri.org/). Since 2016, we have a proxmox cluster (UNESP, Franca campus) and since 2022 another proxmox cluster (IPPRI/UNESP, São Paulo campus). With thisinfrastructure we provide VDI and databases to professors, students and researchers from various locations around the world.
Submission Number: 186
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