A new tool in the open source arsenal announced its beta launch last week. Called Open Context, the project involves scientists from Cambridge University (UK), Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, U.C. Berkeley, and the University of Chicago, and is supported by grants from the William and Flora Hewett Foundation, "inkind" services from Deloitte and Touche and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and help from individual donors.
Open Context is a project out of the Alexandria Archive Institute (AAI), a nonprofit institute named after the famous Ptolemaic Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The AAI is intent on building a place to share data on world history and archaeology. Developed by Eric Kansa, Sarah Whicher Kansa and Jeanne Loipiparo, the AAI's demonstration system, Open Context, combines "reports, observations, maps, plans, analyses, digital files and images of excavations and surveys" generated by archaeological research, and makes them available to students and researchers around the globe.
Open Context is the beta database for the AAI, and it currently has information on the Turkish Neolithic sites of Çatalhöyük and Domuztepe; the Bronze Age site of Hazor in Israel, the multi-component Hayonim site, also in Israel; Geissenklosterle, an upper Paleolithic site in Germany; and the prehistoric components of the Turkish site of Pinarbasi. Also in the database is information on the collections of the Zooarchaeology Laboratory of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.
"Conventional publication just isn't well suited for sharing the huge and complex mass of records that archaeologists produce in even one project," says Open Context director Eric Kansa. "Conclusions get published much more than underlying data, and without the primary sources, it's hard to test the validity of those conclusions. Without access to these resources, it is also hard for students to develop skills at using primary data to answer research questions. Worse, without sharing, primary documentation is very vulnerable to loss, and that represents an irreplaceable loss of world heritage.
"Data sharing is a tremendous challenge, in terms of incentives, technologies, theoretical concerns, and even legal and intellectual property considerations. Open Context is a stab at sorting through these technical and social issues, to make it easier for people to share, build and expand on research, all while protecting authorship."
Adds Kansa, "We're looking for feedback and ideas to make this a resource people want expand and use. Ideally, we'd like to see systems like Open Context become part of the regular way archaeologists communicate their results, along with publishing papers and giving conference presentations."
Open Context is a project out of the Alexandria Archive Institute (AAI), a nonprofit institute named after the famous Ptolemaic Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The AAI is intent on building a place to share data on world history and archaeology. Developed by Eric Kansa, Sarah Whicher Kansa and Jeanne Loipiparo, the AAI's demonstration system, Open Context, combines "reports, observations, maps, plans, analyses, digital files and images of excavations and surveys" generated by archaeological research, and makes them available to students and researchers around the globe.
Open Context and Science Commons
The AAI works in conjunction with the Science Commons project, and as with the Science Commons, AAI's directors wish to make it possible for researchers to share basic data, under copyright terms designed by the contributor. Each contributor uploads whatever data they wish to share, and specifically states how the data may be used, whether it has been published or not, and how ownership attribution should be provided. In all cases, copyright remains with the contributor. The remarkably flexible structure of the database (based on the "Archaeological Markup Language" (ArchaeoML) developed by the University of Chicago OCHRE project) allows Open Context to integrate diverse content "without requiring the contributor to conform to rigid, predetermined terminologies or recording systems". In other words, the data maybe be arranged in whatever format works best for the data. Open Context works as a test-bed for ArchaeoML technologies, and its developers hope to see its ideas incorporated in other data publication systems. They're now looking for technology partners to have open data publication integrated with other forms of archaeological publication.Open Context is the beta database for the AAI, and it currently has information on the Turkish Neolithic sites of Çatalhöyük and Domuztepe; the Bronze Age site of Hazor in Israel, the multi-component Hayonim site, also in Israel; Geissenklosterle, an upper Paleolithic site in Germany; and the prehistoric components of the Turkish site of Pinarbasi. Also in the database is information on the collections of the Zooarchaeology Laboratory of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.
Folksonomies and Web 2.0
A powerful search tool is in progress at Open Context, in the form of what is known in the digital universe as folksonomy. Building from the ideas developed out of the growth of the Internet and the "Web 2.0" developer community, folksonomies are taxonomies that are built by the user. Both the contributor and user may 'tag' a particular piece of data or dataset, by attaching a keyword that she or he feels is appropriate. In this way, a powerful, user-established keyword search is constructed from the ground up. Thus, a deer femur recovered from a Neolithic site in Turkey that was worked into an awl may be found tagged with 'animal bone,' 'deer,' 'femur,' 'awl,' 'Neolithic,' 'Turkey,' and 'weaving tool,' allowing the researcher to amass a dataset of whatever kinds of things she is looking for. Researchers using the database for other purposes may attach additional keywords."Conventional publication just isn't well suited for sharing the huge and complex mass of records that archaeologists produce in even one project," says Open Context director Eric Kansa. "Conclusions get published much more than underlying data, and without the primary sources, it's hard to test the validity of those conclusions. Without access to these resources, it is also hard for students to develop skills at using primary data to answer research questions. Worse, without sharing, primary documentation is very vulnerable to loss, and that represents an irreplaceable loss of world heritage.
"Data sharing is a tremendous challenge, in terms of incentives, technologies, theoretical concerns, and even legal and intellectual property considerations. Open Context is a stab at sorting through these technical and social issues, to make it easier for people to share, build and expand on research, all while protecting authorship."
Breaking Boundaries
The Open Context project promises to crack open the boundaries that exist between students and researchers, between researchers and researchers, developing a database that can be accessed by student and faculty alike, to compare data across many sites, many cultures, and many collections. Although Open Context is still in beta testing stage, the project is clearly an exciting step to one of the long-awaited use of the Internet: the open exchange of scientific data.Adds Kansa, "We're looking for feedback and ideas to make this a resource people want expand and use. Ideally, we'd like to see systems like Open Context become part of the regular way archaeologists communicate their results, along with publishing papers and giving conference presentations."
Open Context and Related Websites
- Open Context
- Alexandria Archive Institute
- Science Commons
- University of Chicago's OCHRE project
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