[Board] An OSGeo virtual exhibition of physical memorabilia

["Peter Löwe"]

Hello Board,

I would like to bring an idea to the attention of the Board which was recently discussed in the GRASS GIS user list : How to deal with physical artifacts, which are significant to the OSGeo projects ?

For example, GRASS GIS, being the oldest currently active OSGeo project, has several physical objects, many of them predating the WWW-era, which are of significance to the projects heritage ("memorabilia", e.g. manuals signed by developers (or William Shatner), computer tapes with ancient versions of GRASS which were considered lost, t-shirts from the late 1980s, etc.)

I assume many other OSGeo projects also have an increasing of similar physical memorabilia, which deserve to be preserved, accessed and referenced.

Since OSGeo-related physical artifacts are spread out all over the globe, the pragmatic apporach is to have a _virtual_ exhibition on the OSGeo web presence, providing information about the artifacts and their significance, but also their geo-location and who's the current caretaker/custodian. 

We can create such a virtual exhibition and enable stae-of-the-art scientific citation and reference to these artifacts/memorabilia by persistent digital object identifiers (DOI) if we blend the OSGeo wiki with existing long term archives/data repositories like Zenodo (a permanent scientific infrastructure provided by the European Union), or alternatively (IMHO preferable), OSGeo embracing DOI, becoming a DOI-stakeholder, as a best practice for reliable citation  of physical artifacts, data and software. While this might sound a bit unusual, OSGeo is already actively benefiting from the DOI approach since the majority of OSGeo-related conference video recordings are currently being long-time-preserved in the video repository of TIB Hannover (German National Library for Science and Technology), which is based on the DOI.

best,
Peter