Tag: tDAR

2010 Digital Data Interest Group Annual Report to SAA

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

On March 2, the Digital Data Interest Group (DDIG) released its annual report to the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). The report summarizes advances in digital data curation, including the new NSF requirement for data management plans and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy call for comment on a possible requirement that publicly funded research results be publicly accessible.

The report also highlights tDAR and Open Context as digital data resources, the former as a repository and the latter as a publication venue. To view the full context of the report, check it out on Digging Digitally, the official DDIG blog.

Digital Antiquity and tDAR at SAA

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

Come see us at the Society for American Archaeology’s 76th Annual Meeting in Sacramento, California from March 30 – April 3, 2011. Digital Antiquity will be at Booth 126 in the Exhibition hall. Additionally, members of the Digital Antiquity staff will be participating or chairing several fora:

  • Planning for Archaeological Digital Data Management: Digital Antiquity and Open Context have organized a forum for archaeologists to discuss planning for access to and preservation of  digital archaeological data and documents.  Last year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) mandated that proposals include a “data management plan” in order to be considered for funding.  The objective of this requirement is to ensure that NSF-generated data be more accessible and preserved for future uses.  The ultimate goal is to broaden research opportunities by making access to NSF-generated data easier.  The requirement represents a challenge to grant seekers not familiar with the conceptual and technical issues of data sharing and long-term preservation.  To help SAA members better understand NSF’s requirement and how to address it, this forum will introduce guides to best practice in digital data management and two archaeological digital data management systems, the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR), maintained by Digital Antiquity and Open Context, maintained by the Alexandria Archive.
  • Using the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) for Management and Research: Increasingly archaeological information about archaeological resources exists in digital formats.  Digital data present both opportunities and challenges.  If effectively archived, digital data are more easily accessed, searched, and shared than paper records.  Yet digital data are more fragile and frequently treated as paper documents, making them completely inaccessible and easily destroyed or forgotten.  There are efforts underway to improve such situations.  Presenters will provide summaries of archival projects, examples of comparative studies using digital data integration tools, the state of digital data access and preservation, copyright and intellectual property issues, and general guidelines about digital data access and preservation.
  • Mortuary Practices in the American Southwest: The study of prehistoric mortuary practices in the American Southwest is undergoing tremendous change in the new millennium. The challenges (and opportunities) of NAGPRA implementation, declines in the number of large samples being excavated, and loss of data from previously excavated samples have altered mortuary archaeology in the region. Given this state of affairs, the development of an integrated regional database of prehistoric mortuary practices is imperative. This session at the 76th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Sacramento, CA is devoted to the first stages of creating such a data set. Participants in the session will develop the frameworks and structures for building a regional mortuary database. The database that is developed will expand the potential for research with existing and future burial samples.

To learn more about the Digital Antiquity forums and other events at the 76th Annual SAA Meeting, read the collection of abstracts. A list of other sessions related to digital archaeology and data is available on the Digging Digitally blog.

We hope to see you there!  Visit the Digital Antiquity exhibit and say “hello.”

One Size Does Not Fit All: New NSF Grant

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

Principle investigators Keith Kintigh and K. Selçuk Candan recently secured a NSF Information Integration and Informatics small project grant for their proposal, “One Size Does Not Fit All: Empowering the User with User-Driven Integration.” Responding to the inefficiency of current schemes, which sacrifice possible data uses in order to produce early integration, User-Driven Integration (UDI) is an approach that takes advantage of expert opinions from the users of integrated data. Scientists and decision-makers have different needs and expectations from data integration operations, and their input will improve data management in complex systems.

UDI also benefits students: undergraduate Honors capstone projects and graduate computer science courses will be formed to test and improve the approach. tDAR data structure is in line with the UDI approach, which values user feedback over structured data, integrating dynamic and variable data sets which may mesh in a variety of ways.

tDAR Software Update (Cadaster)

Posted on by Adam Brin

Digital Antiquity continuously works to update tDAR software as a part of its mission to improve digital data preservation and storage. The Cadaster Release, from Winter 2010-2011, focused primarily on supporting the ingest of National Archaeological Database (NADB) metadata as well as enhancement of existing user workflows. Increasing usability is a crucial method to improving the overall efficiency of data entry and management. Key changes to the software include:

  • Previously, the relationship between a record and the project it was filed into required the record to automatically copy all of the data from the project to each record in that project.  With this release, this action is now both explicit, and optional, allowing selective “inheritance” section-by-section within a tDAR record.  Added support for institutional authorship in addition to the existing personal authorship
  • Added the ability to record notes and identifiers (such as contract number) to the schema and data entry forms
  • Redesigned the search results display to allow for easier review of records and to enable sorting
  • Enabled tDAR to make better use of geospatial data specified by the user including automatic assignment of geographic keywords based on the site coordinates specified
  • Developed tools and infrastructure to bulk import XML records into tDAR
  • Added visualization tool for ontologies
  • Introduced display of thumbnails for PDFs and images stored within tDAR
  • Enabled easy replacement of Datasets, Ontologies, and Coding Sheets within tDAR without forcing the user to entirely remap data records
  • Enhanced keyword searching to index and search general terms as well as specific ones, i.e., “Paleo-Indian” would be indexed in addition to the terms “Clovis” or “Folsom”.
  • Support for synonyms and Display Labels in tDAR ontologies
  • Significant performance enhancements throughout the system using NADB metadata records to test
  • Support for the TAG (Transatlantic Archaeological Gateway), a SOAP-based interface used by the UK Archaeological Data Service (ADS) released in Beta form

Digital Antiquity tDAR Grants Program

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

Digital Antiquity is developing a grants program to support the archiving of digital archaeological data and documents in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record), a new international digital repository.  Reports and data shared through tDAR are made accessible to the public on the web and their long-term preservation is ensured.

CRM firms, public agencies, individuals, universities, colleges, and other organizations are invited to submit brief proposals explaining the value of the information to be contributed.  A wide array of projects will be considered, such as individual projects, regional archives, and thematic research.  Grants will be awarded in two categories:  up to $ 2,000, and up to $ 10,000.  We anticipate making approximately 40 awards.  Rapid review of proposals will begin on 25 February 2011 and continue until until funds are committed.

Specific criteria and instructions will be made available by mid-December at http//digitalantiquity.org/grants.

Stay up-to-date with Digital Antiquity news, events and initiatives. Sign Up for the mailing list.

tDAR Software Update (Balk)

Posted on by Adam Brin

Digital Antiquity is continually committed to improving digital archaeological data preservation. The Balk release of tDAR (Fall 2010) was focused on file storage and management.  It was designed primarily around the need to store and manage images within the tDAR repository. Improvements and additions to the software include:

  • Migrated the internal filestore to a PairTree model (based on the CDL spec).  This model allows for a clear organization of the tDAR file-store and grouping of related materials.
  • Enabled versioning of files within tDAR
  • Migrated deleted records from actual deletion to a “flag” to allow for preservation of files and metadata for deleted items; also enabled the ability to save records in draft form before publishing.
  • Enabled a generic file processing workflow that supports handling of archival, working, and temporary files
  • Used above infrastructure to develop support for processing images within tDAR
  • Enabled searching within the contents of PDFs
  • Added support for processing files on a separate server, if needed
  • Redesigned the user’s main page within tDAR to list recent actions
  • Enhanced searching to support multi-lingual terms
  • Redesigned the main tDAR page to show a map of records, as well as a graph of records by type
  • Redesigned the data-integration process to simplify common user workflows
  • Performed a review of the support of embargoed and confidential data, added additional enhancements including the automatic obfuscation of site coordinates that may be too specific
  • Implemented additional auto-complete services throughout the integration process to improve performance and simplify data entry.

tDAR Software Update (Azimuth)

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

Digital Antiquity continually works to improve preservation and management of digital archaeological data. This commitment was instantiated in the first tDAR software release during the Summer of 2010. This initial release, Azimuth, was focused primarily on infrastructure and  data entry issues. Major accomplishments included:

  • Setting up a predictable development and test environment.
  • Developing a Digital Antiquity and tDAR website
  • Unifying the look and feel of the tDAR application and the tDAR website
  • Reviewing the data dictionary for tDAR and simplifying the model
  • Enhancing the data entry screens to optimize a user’s productivity
  • Enabling public access to tDAR metadata without requiring a user to login
  • Consistently displaying all metadata for records to users including metadata inherited from parent projects
  • Adding context-sensitive help to the data entry screens
  • Adding auto-entry (auto-complete) for Authors, Editors, and other personal relationships within tDAR
  • Enhancing general performance
  • Developed auto-suggestion model for mapping ontologies to values within tDAR

Digital Antiquity Responds to OSTP Call for Comment on Improving Access to Federal Research Results

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

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.

The Creation of Digital Antiquity is Made Possible by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided a grant of $1.29 million dollars to establish the Digital Antiquity organization and fund the development and maintenance of an international digital repository for archaeological data and documents.  The repository, the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR), is established and available for search and for contributors who wish to deposit digital archaeological data or documents. Instructions and easy-to-use web interface screens are available at the tDAR website.