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

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associated services should be made available to researchers and organizations to store their own data
and mirror data of others.”
Slightly more recent research by Pettersen et al. (2008) has reached similar conclusions. This article
reported on attempts to create an <strong>in</strong>tegrated data grid for two archaeological projects <strong>in</strong> Australia, and
stated that:
A cont<strong>in</strong>u<strong>in</strong>g problem <strong>in</strong> the archaeological and cultural heritage <strong>in</strong>dustries is a lack of
coord<strong>in</strong>ated digital resources and tools to access, analyze and visualize archaeological data for
research and publication. A related problem is the absence of persistent archives that focus on
the long-term preservation of these data. As a result professionals and researchers are either
unaware of the existence of data sets, or aware of them but unable to access them for a
particular project (Pettersen et al. 2008).
One potential benefit of a coord<strong>in</strong>ated cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure or <strong>in</strong>tegrated digital archive for more
archaeological projects as <strong>in</strong>dicated here is that it would allow more researchers to not only f<strong>in</strong>d and
possibly reuse data but also to use their own tools with those data (such as visualizations). The
architecture ultimately chosen by this project was the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) 219 developed by
the San Diego Supercomput<strong>in</strong>g Center. The biggest challenge they found <strong>in</strong> us<strong>in</strong>g the SRB was the
lack of an easy-to-use <strong>in</strong>terface. Their project also encountered various challenges of data capture <strong>in</strong>
the field, problems with data logg<strong>in</strong>g, and, like many other researchers, they criticized the fact, that
“there is no standardized methodology <strong>in</strong> archaeology for record<strong>in</strong>g data <strong>in</strong> a digital format.” While
Pettersen et al. (2008) are explor<strong>in</strong>g the use of ArchaeoML for data <strong>in</strong>tegration and portability, they
also submitted that the largest challenge was to create a user-friendly way for archaeologists to <strong>in</strong>teract
with the data grid.
As was illustrated above, OpenContext makes use of the XML standard ArchaeoML to <strong>in</strong>tegrate
disparate archaeological collections, and Kilbride (2005) has also suggested that XML could be used
as a standard for the digital preservation of archaeological data. He noted, however, that there was
relatively little XML activity among archaeologists, largely because of the diverse nature of the
community, which <strong>in</strong>cludes archaeological field workers, f<strong>in</strong>d specialists, museum curators, and many
others, all of whom often have different ways of describ<strong>in</strong>g the same <strong>in</strong>formation. Another significant
issue Kilbride listed was that to support the uptake of XML by archaeologists, more XML-based tools
needed to move out of the development stage and <strong>in</strong>to production, and that consolidation, rather than
elaboration, was needed. “Work<strong>in</strong>g on the assumption that different types of archaeology will gravitate
towards subtly different flavours of XML, then perhaps the most important technical part of this
work,” Kilbride concluded, “will be an open and systematic declaration of the semantics of various
types of XML and appropriate mapp<strong>in</strong>gs between them, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g explicit <strong>in</strong>dications of terms <strong>in</strong> a
given schema that cannot be mapped directly to terms <strong>in</strong> another” (Kilbride 2005).
A variety of research by the ETANA-DL 220 has also explored the difficulties of <strong>in</strong>tegrat<strong>in</strong>g
archaeological collections, particularly how to map different schemas together. This digital library is
part of the larger project ETANA (Electronic Tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives), 221 which also
provides access to ABZU and <strong>in</strong>cludes a collection of core texts <strong>in</strong> the field of Ancient Near East
studies. The ETANA-DL used the “5S” (streams, structures, spaces, scenarios, and societies)
219 http://www.sdsc.edu/srb/<strong>in</strong>dex.php/Ma<strong>in</strong>_Page
220 http://digbase.etana.org:8080/etana/servlet/Start
221 http://www.etana.org/