AGAIN: sharing the data

[Giancarlo Macchi]

After 2 week it seems that only Chris Puttick is willing to
share his own archaeological data.
So I ask again, and I will add a 4th question:

a) How many of you are willing to share their own data?
b) How many of you are able to share their own data?
c) What kind of data would you eventually share with the community?
   everything? a part of it? only the part related with your published
   models or theories?
d) How many of you are interested in the archaeological data sharing issue
   but at this time do not have no/enough data to share but in the future...

Listen, I do not think that the solution would be a complex
one. What do we need here?  1) a well documented and shared metadata
standard. 2) any kind of repository administrator system. I do not
think that any database system will work. 3) a mirror network to
ensure data survival, and that's all.

OK we can wait and see if someone else might do the job for
us. But we already know that something like this is not going
to happen.

I do not think that Nabonidus, eDNA or OpenContext may be a solution for the
 original "data sharing" issue here [f(x) -> V] . At the same time I do not
think that any national government database like those of the UK (ADS for
instance) address the  problem of scientific data availability.
This kind of systems are CRM oriented. So basically they keep track
of sites or archaeological entities as absolute assertions. Scientifically
speaking I need instead the exact copy of the datasets my colleague has
used. Has he changed/corrected/modieid the original CRM file?

Giancarlo

 

--
Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology

[Marta Caroscio]

Dear Giancarlo, dear all,

sorry for not answering so far, but writing my dissertation kept me away
from anything else!
Yes, of course I would like to share my data. There is no problem concerning
my own ones, but the point is that usually they are part of a lager project
involving several people. If only my data are available you do not get any
idea about the context.
It might be not easy to convince everybody to share their data, most of all
if they are still unpublished, but I can try to sort it out.
I do not have much time now, but I will have more from jenaury onwards.
Anyway I will keep an eye on the mailing list

Cheers,

Marta.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Giancarlo Macchi" <macchi@...>
To: <archaeology@...>
Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2006 10:27 AM
Subject: AGAIN: sharing the data

> After 2 week it seems that only Chris Puttick is willing to
> share his own archaeological data.
> So I ask again, and I will add a 4th question:
>
> a) How many of you are willing to share their own data?
> b) How many of you are able to share their own data?
> c) What kind of data would you eventually share with the community?
>   everything? a part of it? only the part related with your published
>   models or theories?
> d) How many of you are interested in the archaeological data sharing issue
>   but at this time do not have no/enough data to share but in the
> future...
>
> Listen, I do not think that the solution would be a complex
> one. What do we need here?  1) a well documented and shared metadata
> standard. 2) any kind of repository administrator system. I do not
> think that any database system will work. 3) a mirror network to
> ensure data survival, and that's all.
>
> OK we can wait and see if someone else might do the job for
> us. But we already know that something like this is not going
> to happen.
>
> I do not think that Nabonidus, eDNA or OpenContext may be a solution for
> the
> original "data sharing" issue here [f(x) -> V] . At the same time I do not
> think that any national government database like those of the UK (ADS for
> instance) address the  problem of scientific data availability.
> This kind of systems are CRM oriented. So basically they keep track
> of sites or archaeological entities as absolute assertions. Scientifically
> speaking I need instead the exact copy of the datasets my colleague has
> used. Has he changed/corrected/modieid the original CRM file?
>
> Giancarlo
>
>
>
> --
> Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology
>
>

--
Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology

[Joost Soeterbroek]

Hi,

On Sat Oct 7 10:27:12 CEST 2006, Giancarlo Macchi wrote:
 > standard. 2) any kind of repository administrator system. I do not
 > think that any database system will work. 3) a mirror network to
[snip]
 > speaking I need instead the exact copy of the datasets
 > my colleague has used. Has he changed/corrected/modieid
 > the original CRM file?

Reading your requirements with regards to a repository system to store
archaeological data, I would like to propose to you the use of the
Subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/) revision control system.

Originally used primarily in software development, Subversion could very
well be used to store archaeological data, both binary and non-binary,
and will allow you to easily track who has submitted and/or modified the
data. Basically, what Subversion will offer you is a centralized file
repository with historical information.

People working with the data can submit, view, change and retrieve the
data over the Internet, even revert back to previous versions of the data.

You can also make your repository easily viewable/browsable through the
internet with Trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/), which contains (among
other things) a source browser allowing a view on the data in the
Subversion repository and the changes to it.

Both Trac and Subversion are both Open Source projects and can be used
freely and separately from each other. If you want, I can help with
implementing this. All you need it is someone to host and maintain this.


Regards,
--


Joost Soeterbroek <joost@...>

--
Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology

[emilianoscampoli]

XML can represent our archives out of a DBMS and it can be a useful language to interchange our data. Like RSS, an XML file that is formatted with a schema can be read from an application that works like a news aggregator, or from other software that allow us to make queries and search for information. A web service for archaeology would be an instrument that reads and processes all archaeological data formatted with a simple schema placed on the web. But how is possible to make this schema? Is it possible to make a Simple Archaeological Schema that will be used in many countries?
I think that XML data on the web will be important to join our data but it is not simple to run.
First we can re-use RSS like a container of archaeological data, with a slightly modified css that can represent our "ArcheoFeeds". Then we can use our CSS in the web aggregator instead of the default one. For example:

<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Excavation of via Castellani, Florence</title>
<link> http://www.archeofirenze.unisi.it </link>
<description>Scavo condotto tra il 2000 ed il 2004 a Firenze in via Castellani dietro gli Uffizi.
-Site location:<span class="site_location">via Castellani, Florence, Italy</span>
-Intervention type:<span class="site_intervention_type">Excavation 2000-2004</span>
-Responsible:<span class="site_responsible">Gino Strada</span>
-Biblio:<span class="biliographic_references"><p>ciao, ciao</p><p>Goodbye</p></span>
</description>
<item>
<title>building</title>
<link>http://www.archeofirenze.unisi.it/id10.xml</link>
<description>Edificio costruito tra XIII e XIV secolo con fondazioni ad arco
<span class="item_life">XIII,XIV,XV,XVI,XVII,XVIII,XIX,XX</span>
<span class="item_birth">XIII</span>
<span class="etc">Info supplementari</span>
</description>
<category>URL of list of categories in the item title element</category>
<author>Emiliano</author>
</item>
<item>......</item>
<item>......</item>
</channel>
</rss>

So we have for each excavation one RSS file with the most important <item>; each <item> can link to another x(h)tml page wich contain more data.

Moreover an XML document with a comprehensible schema can be trasformed in others XML documents with others schemas according to our requirements; shortly
desktop(1) DBMS(1)  >  XML(1) with schema (1) on server > XSLT processor > XML(2) with schema (2) in desktop(2) > DBMS (2) > ......

The most importat thing is that our schemas are comprehensible and not exactly the same. With XSLT we can built easy ways to interchange our datas and to trasform the hierarchical structure of XML documents.


Emiliano Scampoli
University of Siena

--
Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology

[Stefano Costa]

Il giorno mar, 10/10/2006 alle 15.45 +0200, emilianoscampoli@... ha
scritto:
> The most importat thing is that our schemas are comprehensible and not
> exactly the same.

I think what you are exposing is good, but I don't agree with the
"comprehensible". The assumption that a schema by itself can be
comprehensible is plainly wrong just as thinking so of  an
archaeological record item (that is our main concern).

Schemas need to be _explained_ : if you use XHTML you know that you can
understand all you can possibly need about it at
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/

If you go into the hard task of creating a schema, plan also to write
documentation for it. By documentation I mean not just technical
rubbish, but a description of the concepts that are behind your
categories and can help someone else writing a translator (XSLT or
whatever). Keep in mind that if you share your data, they would be
accessed also by people that don't know your pre-concepts, or come from
other cultural domains.

Otherwise, good point, XML is suitable for a good amount of our data
IMHO.

Best regards,

Stefano

--
Stefano Costa
http://www.iosa.it Software Open Source per l'Archeologia
Jabber: steko@...
GnuPG Key ID 1024D/0xD0D30245
Linux Registered User #385969 counter.li.org


--
Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology

[Sebastian Rahtz]

emilianoscampoli@... wrote:
> XML can represent our archives out of a DBMS and it can be a useful language to interchange our data. Like RSS, an XML file that is formatted with a schema can be read from an application that works like a news aggregator, or from other software that allow us to make queries and search for information. A web service for archaeology would be an instrument that reads and processes all archaeological data formatted with a simple schema placed on the web. But how is possible to make this schema? Is it possible to make a Simple Archaeological Schema that will be used in many countries?
>  
There are several attempts at this (I think of
http://www.heritage-standards.org/, and of course the CIDOC stuff), but
its not easy. I'd hesitate to think your suggestion RSS  and embedded
mini-languages is wise
for serious scientific data, but maybe that would be a cute way of
proceeding.
> Moreover an XML document with a comprehensible schema can be trasformed in others XML documents with others schemas according to our requirements; shortly
> desktop(1) DBMS(1)  >  XML(1) with schema (1) on server > XSLT processor > XML(2) with schema (2) in desktop(2) > DBMS (2) > ......
>  
you can do transformations if you are very very sure your two schemas
describe the same thing and have the same models....

Some of you may be familiar with the Text Encoding Initiative
(http://www.tei-c.org/). This has been working
for the last 15 years to create and document markup schemes for textual
and linguistic data. Archaeological
schema writers might like to look at the TEI literate programming scheme
for authoring and documenting schemas.
Mind you, I would claim that the TEI as it stands can describe a lot of
archaeological data. You can see
a talk I gave on the subject at
http://tei.oucs.ox.ac.uk/Oxford/2006-09-28-xmlarchaeology/index-0.xhtml

--
Sebastian Rahtz      

Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone [phone]

OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk


--
Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology