We should place the world’s cultural heritage—its historical documentation, its literary and artistic achievements, its languages, beliefs, and practices—within the reach of every citizen. The value of building an infrastructure that gives all citizens access to the human record and the opportunity to participate in its creation and use is enormous, exceeding even the significant investment that will be required to build that infrastructure. The Commission is also keenly aware that in order for the future to have a record of the present, we need legal and viable strategies for digital preservation; considerable investment is now required on that front as well. Investments need to be made on the basis of research, and, in this case, a good deal more research is needed on digital preservation, tools, and uses and users of digital collections, in academic settings and beyond. 1
But this is only part of the realization that the Commission hopes to leave with readers of this report. In a recent public presentation of the draft findings of this report, the Commission’s chair was asked, “If your report were a complete success, what would be the result, five or six years from now?” The answer is two-fold. First, if this report’s recommendations are implemented, then in five or six years, there will be a significantly expanded audience for humanities and social science research among the general public. A relatively small audience on the open Web will still be a far larger audience than scholars in these disciplines have been able to find up to now in academic bookstores, research libraries, and print journals. Second, if the recommendations of this report are implemented, humanities and social science researchers five or six years from now will be answering questions that today they might not even consider asking.
The Commission understands that increasing access to scholarly research and experimenting with new research methods both entail some risk, but it firmly and collectively believes that the risk of not doing both is far greater, in terms of the ultimate sustainability of the disciplines in question. Senior scholars in the humanities and social sciences and senior administrators in research universities must lead the way to a new, more open, and more productive relationship with the public, and to new ways of doing scholarship.
