The Society for American Archaeology supports a generous tDAR benefit for student members, and time is running out to take advantage of this offer for 2014! All SAA student members are eligible for a voucher that allows them to upload three files (totaling 30MB) to tDAR, valued at $150.  This is a wonderful opportunity to develop good digital archiving habits, and to preserve and make accessible your archaeological information.  Students have used these in a variety of ways.  For example, Angela Huster used hers to archive the data associated with her publication in Advances in Archaeological Practice.  Saul Hedquist turned a class paper into a conference poster, and archived the data set, the poster, and the references in tDAR.

You need not be as far along with your research as Angela or Saul were for their tDAR projects.  For example, you might archive data, photos, maps, or reports gathered to support your Master’s thesis or dissertation research, even if these materials aren’t final or the results aren’t yet published.  Photos, maps, and field notes or reports may be ready to archive now — even before you’ve completed your analysis or interpretations.  If you plan to add to your data sets in the future you can upload a current copy to tDAR for safekeeping, and replace the file when you have new data.  If you haven’t yet published the information you can embargo the file in tDAR, which will prevent others from downloading it until a date specified in the future.

If you aren’t sure what to put into tDAR, or how to get started we encourage you to sign up for one of our online seminars through SAA’s Online Seminar Series.  Introduction to Archaeological Digital Data Management is offered on February 12th, 2015 from 12-2PM EST.  Introduction to Digital Repositories for Archaeological Materials: tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record) is offered on September 28th from 2-3PM EST, and is free to SAA members.  Read more about and register for these and other online seminars offered by SAA here.

To take advantage of your SAA student member benefit please email membership@saa.org and request your tDAR voucher for 2014 before January 31st, 2015.  If you haven’t yet registered to become a tDAR member visit tDAR.org to sign up.  Then head over to tDAR’s pricing page (core.tdar.org/cart/add), enter your voucher number in the “Redeem Code” field, and click “Next: Review & Choose Payment Method.” Your credit will be added to your account and you can begin uploading files!