ARIADNE is funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme

Swedish National Data Service (SND)

The OAIS reference model and archaeological data

Ulf Jakobsson

www.snd.gu.se

• Established January 1st 2008 by the Swedish Research Council

• Hosted by the University of Gothenburg

• Financed by the Swedish Research Council and the University of Gothenburg

• Social sciences, humanities and medicine

• Originates in SSD (Swedish Social Science Data Service)

• Staff: 31 of which 2 are working with archaeological data

• Digital Archive based on the OAIS model

• Started archiving archeological data in 2011, but is a rapidly growing area of work

Background and organization of SND

www.snd.gu.se

Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model

• The OAIS and its workflow model provide the basis for SND’s activities and how we handle research data.

Deposition of data Quality control

Enhancement with metadata Production of codebooks

Policies and recommendations

Archiving the data for long time storage

Data searchable via web interfaces and accessible for new research

www.snd.gu.se

• The OAIS model has been applied for:

–the data of more than 360 archaeological surveys (388 datasets; shape-files, reports, Access databases, >40,000 files, >7.3 GB)

–the long-time storage of parts of the Swedish Rock Art Archive material

–120,000 images*, 5.8 TB. More material will be added

–a few thematic databases

• Expect a tenfold increase in data within the next few years.

* Including lossy compressed versions

SND, OAIS and archaeological data

Swedish Rock Art Research Archives, www.shfa.se The west coast of Sweden has the largest density of rock art in Europe.

www.snd.gu.se

Archaeological data and SND

• Until August 2011 SND did not have any archaeological data

–No knowledge of:

Structure

Documentation

Metadata

Storage

• Contacted in August 2011

–Project initiated by the County Administrative Board* in Östergötland, eastern Sweden (one of 21 boards).

Harmonize available data!

*The County admin. boards are giving permissions to archaeological excavations and surveys. The board is also

the controle authority for how the archaeological material is handled.

www.snd.gu.se

Experiences from preparation of data/metadata

• New type of material:

–software!?

–how is the material documented?

–what information in the files can be

used to describe?

used to document?

Extracted?

used as search criteria in web catalogue?

www.snd.gu.se

• Major changes and additions to the internal management system :

–adaptation to the concept “Geographical information”:

Coordinates

bounding box

polygons

administrative areas in hierchies (church parish, civil parish, provinces, counties, municipalities)

map search

–time periods

–keywords

–direct download without registration

www.snd.gu.se

• Spring 2012:

–Delivery with separate data files to 230 rescue/ contract archaeological surveys

Originated from 5 different organizations (private archaeology companies, museums, different sections of the National Heritage Board)

covering 269 659 square meters

12 162 archaeological features

no visible coordinates

www.snd.gu.se

Required preparation of data/metadata by the archeologists for ingest

• Different input of values

– depending on original organization

– depending on operator

• Major changes that had to be done to increase machine readability*:

– How to set the date for the excavation/survey

– Format of geographical information

*Increased machine readability = easier/faster publication!

www.snd.gu.se

• Date in files:

– spring 2001

– May 2000

– April-June 2006

– May 1 to 15 2002

– 2001-08 - 2001-11

– 2003-07, 2003-11

– 2004-10/2005-04

– 2004-05/06

• Date should be given:

– in ISO format (yy-mm-dd/yy-mm)

– with start/finish-format in different fields

www.snd.gu.se

• For better understanding of ”place” information; the geographical information should be divided into five fields instead of one (counties, provinces, municipalities, civil parish and church parish).

County Province Municipality Civil parish

Östergötland Östergötland Linköping, Mjölby Slaka, Vikingstad, Viby, Sya, Mjölby

Östergötland Östergötland Motala, Mjölby Russingstorp

Östergötland Östergötland Linköping Slaka

www.snd.gu.se

• Autumn 2012

– Coordinate fields added = Bounding Box information possible!

– Format for date changed

–157 new studies deposited

–coordinate fields added by depositor

–After discussion with data provider, ”place” information has been divided into four fields

–330 studies published

www.snd.gu.se

• In 2013:

– The ”place” information divided into four fields for all GIS-data

– Management system reprogrammed to handle the information

– New ingest of the geographical information must be done

– In order to enable citation of data, assigning persistant links to studies/datasets. Data can then be linked to other information such as related reports, papers or other relevant data.

– 47 studies published

www.snd.gu.se

Access and re-use of archeological data

• The GIS data

– directly downloadable

– without any registration

– for anyone who wants to use

– versioning fully implemented

www.snd.gu.se

• Most of the information in the web catalogue SND extracts from the shape files,

• But also the information we take from the reports, can be seen (and searched for) in SNDs web catalogue.

www.snd.gu.se

• Dataset

–shape files

–Access database

• Dataset and excavation report in Swedish

• Metadata partially translated to English

• The material will be searchable via the ARIADNE infrastructure…

www.snd.gu.se

Polygon information can be extracted from shape files, transferred to management system (DDI), displayed via map in a open source system… Information fields must be added.

www.snd.gu.se

Conclusion: In the future

• New Management system

• New map interface

• New search system

• Better system for data deposition

• Automated system for assigning persistent identifiers

• More cooperation with the Swedish National Heritage Board

• Better statistics for downloads