ArcheoInf

[Kai-Christian Bruhn]

Although I'm not involved I'd like to point the listmembers to a
promising German project:

Since May this year the ArcheInf-Project is online with a new website,
partly available in English:

http://www.archeoinf.de/archeoinf/archeoinf-english

The rest is in German, the core but supposed to be "machine-
readable" ;-)

http://archeoinf.ub.rub.de/docrepo/

Cheers

Kai

[Leif Isaksen]

I'll second that. I went to visit them earlier this year and the project is definitely worth checking out.

Cheers

L.

[Anthony Beck]

Excellent. I look forward to seeing how this develops and for more translations (something like this could even prompt me to learn German!)

 

Ant

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Kai-Christian Bruhn <in...@digidok.de> wrote:

[Ottevanger, Jeremy]

Looks great, I wish I spoke some German but simply the variety of
formats, options and related links on a random page like this:

http://archeoinf.ub.rub.de/docrepo/entry/Gela_631/pos/1

suggests there's a bit of a gold-mine here.

Cheers, Jeremy



Jeremy Ottevanger
Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2207
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: jotte...@museumoflondon.org.uk
www.museumoflondon.org.uk

Spectacular new ?20 million Galleries of Modern London opening at Museum of London in spring 2010.

Find out more at www.museumoflondon.org.uk

Before printing, please think about the environment

[Maximilian Schich]

Looking at the mission statement of the ArcheoInf project (
http://www.archeoinf.de/archeoinf/archeoinf-english ), a notable
characteristic is its practical openness. For example it states:
"ArcheoInf’s central aspect is the autonomy of the databases; they
should remain unchanged in their structure." This is prudent, as
databases hereby remain or become a citeable entity, similar to a
scientific journal article or a piece of code published with a suitable
license. As a consequence, the ArcheoInf repository provides one
possible alternative for projects, which by nature cannot conform to the
exclusive guideline of the German Archaeologic Institute (
http://www.dainst.de/medien/de/IT-Leitfaden_Teil1_Vorgaben_v1_0_2_DAI.pdf
), which makes extensive use of the word "müssen" (must), and whose
glossary does not mention state of the art technologies such as RDF, N3,
Linked Data and others.

I was marginally involved in the conception of the ArcheoInf project by
attending the constituting workshop back in May 2006. However, I am not
involved since then, so the statement above is my own opinion.

Best regards,
Max.

Dr. phil. Maximilian Schich M.A.
DFG Visiting Research Scientist
CCNR - BarabásiLab | Northeastern University, Physics Dept.
110 Forsyth St., 111 Dana Research Center | Boston, MA 02115
tel.: +1-617-8177880 | skype: maximilian.schich
mail: maxim...@schich.info | home: www.schich.info


Kai-Christian Bruhn schrieb:

[Anthony Beck]

This is prudent, as
databases hereby remain or become a citeable entity, similar to a
scientific journal article or a piece of code published with a suitable
license. As a consequence, the ArcheoInf repository provides one
possible alternative for projects, which by nature cannot conform to the

exclusive guideline of the German Archaeologic Institute .......

 

Agree. Another reason which is significant in live environments is that the organisation that 'shares' the source data does not need to alter any of its current business processes. We have utilised a similar model for the utility sector in the UK

 

Ant

[geoff carver]

Generally such guidelines are decades behind the times; those for the N-S subway project in Cologne (then billed as the largest development in Europe) forbid digital-only documentation; the problem is that the archives (like everything else) are underfunded and have no clue about how to keep everything updated

[Kai-Christian Bruhn]

I don't see the guidelines of the German Institute in opposition to
the goals of archeoinf. On the one side there is wishful thinking on
how data should be kept and I agree that the approach of archeoinf
does make sense to indroduce a kind of abstraction layer on top of
widespread local databases serving as a virtual data repository. On
the other side is the (definitely) underfunded 'IT-reality' of
archaeologists working for a large research institution who ought to
digitally organize their data seeking the 'least common denominator '.
It'd be interesting to hear/read alternative ideas to reconcile the
data of researches, some offended some addicted to computing, from a
huge variety of research interests. But that's another thread, isn't
it?

Kai

[Maximilian Schich]

I did not say the DAI "binding guidelines" are in opposition to the goals of ArcheoInf. I only pointed out, that the ArcheoInf mission statement is more open than these binding[!] guidelines. As a consequence, projects, which do not conform to the DAI guidelines, might find an interesting alternative in the ArcheoInf data repository, as it does not seem to enforce these guidelines as "binding".
In my opinion the DAI "guidelines" should be governed by the word "shall", as opposed to "must". Excluding reasonable alternative approaches, with a restrictive a priori guideline and funding policy, will only result in a drain of valuable archaeologist brains to other fields, institutes and countries.

Best regards,
Maximilian Schich.

Dr. phil. Maximilian Schich M.A.
DFG Visiting Research Scientist
CCNR - BarabásiLab | Northeastern University, Physics Dept.
110 Forsyth St., 111 Dana Research Center | Boston, MA 02115
tel.: +1-617-8177880 | skype: maximilian.schich
mail: maxim...@schich.info | home: www.schich.info

Kai-Christian Bruhn schrieb:

I don't see the guidelines of the German Institute in opposition to
the goals of archeoinf. On the one side there is wishful thinking on
how data should be kept and I agree that the approach of archeoinf
does make sense to indroduce a kind of abstraction layer on top of
widespread local databases serving as a virtual data repository. On
the other side is the (definitely) underfunded 'IT-reality' of
archaeologists working for a large research institution who ought to
digitally organize their data seeking the 'least common denominator '.
It'd be interesting to hear/read alternative ideas to reconcile the
data of researches, some offended some addicted to computing, from a
huge variety of research interests. But that's another thread, isn't
it?

Kai

On Oct 20, 6:51 pm, "geoff carver" <gjcar...@t-online.de> wrote:
  

[Leif Isaksen]

I assume that the DAI only asserts that such guidelines are binding to projects under its own aegis? However, this is still in contrast to the British IFA which emphasises standards as an outcome, rather than a procedure or methodology, and only provides guidance for the latter.

More generally, I think it may be unfair to suggest that either imposed standards or more liberal data-sharing arrangements are 'easier'. The former, Global-As-View schemes make it much easier for the end user to amalgamate/browse/search, but raise barriers for contributors who need to make a large number of mental and technical adjustments in order to make their data available (which thus inhibits growth and participation). However, Local-As-View schemes, which emphasise (or at least permit) heterogeneity require so much additional work of curators and users (even in a Linked Data utopia) that only specialists are able to do much with it.

I'm probably not going out on a limb here to say that the interesting question is not either/or, but 'how do we divvy up the work efficiently?', and 'how do we make that work simpler?'

L.

[Maximilian Schich]

Let's try to put it clear: So the question is, should data be integrated as it comes in (before it is used by others), or should it be stored separately and queried by a common user interface. In other words, should we collect data in a predefined standard or convert it to such a standard beforehand, or should we try to integrate diverse data sources only at a later stage in the search result view only. My answer would be both!

Just think of the scientific process as a parallel example: Everybody likes good review papers about a topic. Nevertheless we can only go deeper and discuss a research problem by looking at the single specific papers, in which the problem was originally formulated.

In the same way, heterogeneous data should be stored and archived in the way it is produced, even if it does not fit Mr. Dally's opinion of a standard. As a consequence we can go back to the original data to look for biases and features, which are hard or impossible to explain once it is processed into an amalgamate of integrated data.

Rather than to impose a subjective opinion on the usage of xml vs. txt or tif vs. jpg, it would make much more sense and stand in the institute's tradition, if the DAI would define guidelines, how data, code and literature in Archeology should be cited (for e.g. along the lines of Victoria Stodden's work for Science Commons). This would facilitate the long term preservation of thought and harness better, non-exclusive data integration solutions.

Best regards,
Max.

PS:
For Victoria Stodden's work on Enabling Reproducible Research see
http://www.stanford.edu/~vcs/papers/ERROLSI03092009.pdf
For Science Commons see
http://sciencecommons.org/
For those who don't know what "Global/Local-As-View means, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_integration

PPS: Leif, indeed the DAI serves two versions of the guidelines, one for in house and another for general use. In both part one is titled as "verbindliche Vorgaben", i.e. binding requirements.

Dr. phil. Maximilian Schich M.A.
DFG Visiting Research Scientist
CCNR - BarabásiLab | Northeastern University, Physics Dept.
110 Forsyth St., 111 Dana Research Center | Boston, MA 02115
tel.: +1-617-8177880 | skype: maximilian.schich
mail: maxim...@schich.info | home: www.schich.info

Leif Isaksen schrieb: