Integrating volunteers and Experts

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This presentation was given at the GLAM wiki conference held at the British Museum on the 27 - 28th November 2010. Some slides have been removed due to the image rights belonging to the finder of the Crosby Garrett Helemt.

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Integrating volunteers and Experts - examples from the Portable

Antiquities Scheme

Dan PettThe British Museum

dpett@britishmuseum.org

Portable Antiquities Scheme

• 18,300 contributors of data

• 660,000 objects recorded• 417,000 geo-referenced

find spots• All available under CC

NC-BY-SA• Driving archaeological

knowledge of rural areas• Funded by DCMS

• Employs 56 people• Deal with public

discovery of archaeology

• Started in 1997• Costs £1.4mill per

annum• IT budget c.£5000

Recording: one chance

Our staff generally have one chance to record Dissemination online is swift, cheap, easy There is no other archaeological database of this size It is underused for research at present The data it contains can tell a thousand stories of our shared heritage

Finds recorded per yearYear Finds1998 45881999 82002000 181062001 163682002 119962003 254642004 389972005 521882006 583062007 790102008 564482009 665152010 214840

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 20100

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

Foot & mouth

Scheme reviewed by MLA

OAD go bust

New database launched

2010 – imported two large datasets and one coin hoard of 53,000 objects

Most data is sourced from metal-detecting

GPS co-ordinates if possible

www.finds.org.uk

417,000 records 663,000 objects 18,300 people involved

Why is the spatial data so important?

Without provenance: A museum cannot acquire an object Is it looted? Did the landowner give permission? Context has been lost, we don’t know the significance of the location of discovery.

All objects we have recorded

• 1997 – 2010• Topographical features drive

discovery• Landowners and regulations

can prevent discovery• Biases present in data

collection eg. Staff illness, lack of car etc etc

Staff based here

Here be mountains

Types of objects recorded

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

Metal objects Coins Lithics Pottery Other

Chronological distribution of finds

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

20000

Stone

Age

Bronze

Age

Iron

Age

Roman

Early m

edieva

l

Medie

val

Post-m

ediev

al

Method of discovery of objects recorded by PAS

Metal detecting

Metal detecting, eyes only

Chance

Fieldwalking

Controlled arch.investigation

About us on Wikipedia

Sparse entry on Treasure Act

Wikipedia referrals – finds.org.ukMarch 24th – November 24th

Source Visits PPVMean visit

length Visits

en.wikipedia.org 933 4.148982 4 minutes 933

en.m.wikipedia.org 14 1.571429 30 seconds 14

fr.wikipedia.org 12 4.666667 3 minutes 12

it.wikipedia.org 1 4 3 minutes 1

Disappointingly low referral rate 0.41% from 4 domains

Wikipedia referrals – britishmuseum.orgMarch 24th – November 24th 2010

Referral rate 1.26% from 108 domains

Source Visits Pages/Visit Avg. Time on Site Visits

en.wikipedia.org 50377 6.266074 3 minutes 12 50377

ja.wikipedia.org 7911 4.82834 2 minutes 20 7911

es.wikipedia.org 4239 6.501533 3 minutes 17 4239

de.wikipedia.org 3979 6.16185 2 minutes 43 3979

ru.wikipedia.org 3790 8.004485 4 minutes 3790

fr.wikipedia.org 3166 6.502843 2 minutes 54 3166

it.wikipedia.org 1337 9.849663 4 minutes 49 1337

fa.wikipedia.org 1133 3.076787 2 minutes 33 1133

zh.wikipedia.org 994 5.385312 4 minutes 994

pt.wikipedia.org 969 6.215686 3 minutes 47 969

Major contributors

• User:Victuallers• User:BabelStone• User:Martinevans123• User:AgTigress (I think this is Catherine Johns of BM)• There’s more of course…..

• Amazingly fast generation of stubs after we announce things• Feed data and images to wikipedians that I’ve met or know

from the online social network• We let people know before the announcement about big new

discoveries

Ringlemere gold cup

British Museum record

The Frome Hoard

Frome DYK stats

Frome (Somerset) Hoard

Shrewsbury Hoard

Staffordshire Moorlands trulla

Scheme record

Crosby Garrett Helmet

• Troublesome case• No images of this were in the public domain with appropriate licence• Images sourced at auction and specifically noted for use by wikipedia (I tweeted this at the time….) •Discussion note:Here are some pictures of the auction: http://www.flickr.com/photos/finds/sets/72157625114008100/ under cc-by. These were specifically noted by Daniel Pett from the Portable Antiquities Scheme as being made that way to help WP: http://twitter.com/#!/portableant/status/26650916903 Witty Lama 14:11, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Crosby Garrett Helmet

Our images in wikipedia

Wikimedia commons

• Mostly uploaded by Victuallers after we met at the Hoxne challenge• Around 1200 images so far

Hoard list – many of these are first reported via PAS

The Newark Torc

Thornbury Hoard

The Hallaton Hoard

Vale of York Hoard

Scheme staff

Dbpedia – Staffordshire Hoard

Licences we use

Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alikecc by-nc-sa

Attribution Share Alikecc by-sa

Attributioncc by

Attribution Non-Commercialcc by-nc

If you don’t like the licence we have issued on the work, contact us, we might waive it…..

Initial impact

• 2000 conn/per sec to server on launch day

• Never went offline• Experienced slow

performance• Content caching helped

get the site through the initial onslaught

Day Pages

24/09 1,306,545

25/09 1,772,572

26/09 553,285

27/09 351,070

28/09 267,385

29/09 164,039

[..] Present ~ 25,000

Launch

Flickr daily views @ launchDay Flickr views

24/09 281,970

25/09 161,630

26/09 59,200

27/09 47,900

28/09 32,770

29/09 22,030

* As far as I am aware, this doesn’t include API views, of which the website made use and I used elsewhere.

Referrers and search [flickr]

Very few people clicked through from staffordshirehoard.org.uk – were they stuck in the silo there?

Always get lots of searches for our female Time Team staff

Flickr stats

Processed from - http://stats.vispillo.org

BBC News front page

In the news

PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>PREFIX dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>PREFIX : <http://dbpedia.org/resource/>PREFIX dbpedia2: <http://dbpedia.org/property/>PREFIX dbpedia: <http://dbpedia.org/>PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>PREFIX dbpedia-owl: http://dbpedia.org/ontology/SELECT *FROM <http://dbpedia.org/sparql/>WHERE {?king foaf:page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_England> .OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia-owl:abstract ?abstract} .OPTIONAL {?king foaf:depiction ?depiction}.OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia-owl:thumbnail ?thumb} .OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia2:imgw ?imgw} .?king foaf:page ?page.FILTER langMatches( lang(?abstract), "en") }LIMIT 1

Querying dbpedia for data

Ingested dbpedia sparql results

All names correspond with wikipedia

Depiction

Abstract

Direct link to wikipedia

Complements our data for latest examples and maps of findspots etc

Numismatic guides

Data consumed from wikipedia (via dbpedia)

Latest examples found and recorded

High resolution image of pristine example

Instant map of findspots

Lists of available denominations/mints/types etc

Recent news

• Scheme funding cut by 15% over 4 years

• Now managed by the BM and not MLA

• Have recorded over 200,000 objects this year

• IT budget is less than £5000

The end.Visit our website : www.finds.org.uk

Contact me: dpett@britishmuseum.org

Twitter: @portableant

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