AGAIN: sharing the data

[Dorothy Graves]

Giancarlo said:  "We would be
very grateful if maybe you can provide and post some links of
repositories where you guys in U.K. have already solved the
problem of archaeological data sharing: metadata, open formats,
readability of the data 100 years from now etc?"


I can chime in a tiny bit from the UK/Scotland side of things.  All of my preliminary archaeological data came from the RCAHMS, and one of the requirements they made was that I would give them a copy of my thesis/digital data when I completed.  My research would be available to anyone in the public from that moment forward, because it'd be part of the RCAHMS library.  On the other hand, the geographical data I used (i.e. the 1:10k DTMs and vector-based data) is the sole property of the Ordnance Survey, and expensive to get ahold of unless you're part of a university or other scheme allowing access.  That stuff is of course available at Digimap (http://edina.ac.uk/digimap/)  

As to my data, I'm unclear as to what a member of public could do with my data without access to the Ordnance Survey data.  I guess they could visualise my database in the RCAHMS library and may be allowed to take a copy of it with them, but they wouldn't be allowed to take any of the Ordinance Survey data home with them.  However, the main thing is that my archaeological data would be available to anyone - archaeologists included.  There is a massive drive for digitised archaeological data for the UK; the main repository is of course at http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/

Hope that answers a few questions, or at least gives you interesting links to look at.

Dot
Giancarlo Macchi <macchi@unisi.it> wrote: Sebastian,
Of course it is worrying! Otherwise why are we posting
here. Please, take into account that things in the U.K. and in
Italy are different. Here most of the archaeological records are
kept hidden to the rest of the scientific community. So basically
there is no need to think to "procedures for long-term exchange
and archiving". We are trying to change things and perhaps
you can help us.
With the words "to be formal" I meant to put things in a
comprehensible and exhaustive way for the public. We would be
very grateful if maybe you can provide and post some links of
repositories where you guys in U.K. have already solved the
problem of archaeological data sharing: metadata, open formats,
readability of the data 100 years from now etc?
Thank you in advance,

  giancarlo

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---------------------------
Dorothy Graves
Postgraduate Researcher
Department of Archaeology
School of Arts, Culture and Environment
Old High School, Infirmary Street
Edinburgh EH1 1LT, Scotland, UK
 		
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