Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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digital preservation. The authors contend that current copyright laws make digital preservation difficult
because permission to copy any data must be granted explicitly by the copyright holder, even if data
are copied simply for the purpose of backup; thus, they require all contributors to use copyright
licenses that grant permission to reproduce content. Kansa et al. (2007) also <strong>in</strong>sisted that “copyright
will typically apply to most archaeological field data” to assuage the concern of most archaeologists
that their field data will be stolen if they place them onl<strong>in</strong>e before formally publish<strong>in</strong>g them. Others
have challenged this po<strong>in</strong>t, assert<strong>in</strong>g that any field data published onl<strong>in</strong>e will enter the public doma<strong>in</strong>
immediately (Cahill and Passamano 2007). While this legal debate is beyond the scope of this report,
Open Context also supports other features such as time-stamp<strong>in</strong>g the accession of new collections,
clearly identify<strong>in</strong>g authorship, and provid<strong>in</strong>g permanent citable URLs <strong>in</strong> an effort to encourage proper
citation and reuse of data. The creators of Open Context hope that the development of this system
ultimately will serve as one step <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g open access <strong>in</strong> the field of archaeology.
Although collaboration and data shar<strong>in</strong>g are often not the norm, the field of research archaeology <strong>in</strong>
particular requires a great deal of collaboration because of the large number of specialized fields it
<strong>in</strong>volves. Another area where the CSHE report listed <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g collaboration was between doma<strong>in</strong>
specialists <strong>in</strong> archaeology and technical experts. At the same time, many archaeologists argued that
more doma<strong>in</strong> specialists needed to become technical experts as well, to design tools for the field that
would actually be used:
Indeed, some scholars who specialize <strong>in</strong> such areas as “virtual heritage” consider themselves to
be “methodologists of archaeological research” or “technological ambassadors,” rather than
particular experts <strong>in</strong> a specific period or culture. Moreover, some scholars with dual
archaeological and technical expertise may turn to parallel career paths, and may play an
important, often central, role <strong>in</strong> creat<strong>in</strong>g the <strong>in</strong>frastructure for successful scholarship (Harley et
al. 2010, 109)
The grow<strong>in</strong>g need to master both doma<strong>in</strong> and technical expertise is a theme that is seen throughout the
overviews of all the digital classical discipl<strong>in</strong>es.
Data Integration, Digital Repositories, and Cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure for Archaeology
Arguably one of the best-known repositories for archaeological data is ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>ed by the Archaeology
Data Service (ADS), 210 an organization based at the University of York <strong>in</strong> the United K<strong>in</strong>gdom. The
ADS provides digital-archiv<strong>in</strong>g services for archaeology projects with<strong>in</strong> the United K<strong>in</strong>gdom, offers a
searchable catalog of projects and their data (labeled ArchSearch), and promotes best practices for
digitization, preservation, and database management <strong>in</strong> the larger field of archaeology. 211 Once part of
the now-defunct Arts & Humanities Data Services (AHDS), 212 the ADS receives fund<strong>in</strong>g from the
Arts and Humanities Research <strong>Council</strong> (AHRC) but also has a charg<strong>in</strong>g policy with set fees for storage
and dissem<strong>in</strong>ation. 213 The ADS acknowledged the importance of digital preservation from the time it
was established <strong>in</strong> 1996 (Richards 1997), and a later article by William Kilbride (Kilbride 2005)
offered some <strong>in</strong>sights from 10 years of preserv<strong>in</strong>g archaeological data. “Experience at the ADS shows
that preservation works most easily when creators of digital resources anticipate a future audience and
when <strong>in</strong>heritors of digital resources actively curate them,” Kilbride emphasized, add<strong>in</strong>g that “plann<strong>in</strong>g
210 http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/
211 In fact, the ADS is work<strong>in</strong>g with the Digital Antiquity project (also discussed <strong>in</strong> this section) to def<strong>in</strong>e best practices <strong>in</strong> the digital preservation of
archaeological data that will help maximize its potential reuse (Mitcham, Niven, and Richards 2010).
212 http://ahds.ac.uk/
213 http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Pages/default.aspx