The Center for the Study of Architecture (CSA) has published the article, “Digital Antiquity and the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR): Broadening Access and Ensuring Long-Term Preservation for Digital Archaeological Data,” by Francis P McManamon, Keith W. Kintigh, and Adam Brin.
Read the article in the CSA Newsletter, Fall 2010
In May, the National Science Foundation revealed that there would be changes to its Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) mandating the inclusion of a Data Management Plan in all proposals submitted on or after January 18, 2011. The Foundation also noted its intent to evaluate the Data Management Plan as a part of the Intellectual Merit criterion, the Broader Impacts criterion, or both criteria as appropriate to the project. This change to the PAPPG marks an important commitment by the NSF to social science data accessibility for the scientific community and the public, and will likely promote wider interest in how archaeological data and documents are made accessible and preserved for future generations.
To read more about the changes, visit the revised NSF PAPPG. Also check out the latest version of the NSF Grant Proposal Guide.
On December 10, 2009 the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a call for comment on how to improve access to the results of federally funded research projects. Digital Antiquity’s Francis McManamon (Executive Director) and Sander van der Leeuw (Chair, Digital Antiquity Board of Directors) responded, stating the importance of increased access to archaeological data collected in the United States—a process reliant on a majority of federal funding. The comment suggested the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) as a tool for increasing knowledge of extant data, for integrating new data, for preserving at-risk data, and for increasing the cost efficiency of federally funded research.
Read the full comment here. Also see the OSTP Call for Comment here.
Dean Snow and colleagues Mark Gahegan, Lee Giles, Kenneth Hirth, George Milner, Prasenjit Mitra and James Wang recently published an article in Science about creating an appropriate architecture for entering and managing archaeological data. Their proposed system would integrate image and text searches, GIS analysis, as well as visualization and content management tools. Additionally, their planned use of open-source versions of the toolkit would allow more accessibility by different users, facilitating the addition and use of data.
Read the article online here.