Ecologies and ecosystems

A draft report from the Repositories Research Team (a collaboration between UKOLN and JISCCETIS), "An ecological approach to repository and service interactions" has been published for consultation. It uses metaphors from ecology to represent the interactions between repositories and services, and in this way does provide a useful conceptual mapping at a high level by tapping into existing frames of reference. Basically - considering all factors (human as well as technical) and different perspectives is crucial. In TrustDR we describe that simply as a systematic or holistic approach.

I like the way this approach can provide a useful store of arguments, definitions, explanations etc. for communicating about repositories - for example using 'Biodiversity' to describe how healthy systems thrive with a range of services and are not dependent on single solutions or proprietary technologies; or describing the impact of 'environmental factors' such as OA mandates.

Where I begin to have a problem, is the report's claim that "Ecology offers a neutral metaphor". Not all its terminology is 'neutral' in terms of the concepts it portrays. For example, using parallels with food chains to describe the 'consumption' of data doesn't account for the fact that data is not depleted in the same way as food. This can lead to the same sort of reactions to terms like Intellectual Property which conjures up notions of 'my stuff' and comparisons to physical property, even though a nuanced definition can frame it as a nonrivalrous resource (ie. your use does not rival mine), and accompanying IP laws that balance incentives to create with public rights of access rather than being a system of perfect control for rights holders.

On reflection, it is just this kind of reaction that approaches such as this are designed to provoke - at least it gets us communicating and perhaps re-examining our concepts. However, I do wonder how many reference models we can usefully employ without seriously muddying the waters (or pond?).

The report describes several other uses of the ecology metaphor, and I would add another where the authors have used an ecosystem model to describe all the factors of DRM in relation to education. In this case there is no attempt to map every concept, but simply draws on our notion of an ecosystem to present their case.