Felix SCHÄFER / Martina TROGNITZ
(Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin, Germany)
Keywords: archiving, documentation, data repository, standards
Abstract:
IANUS is a project which aims to build up a national digital archive for archaeological and related data in Germany. Once established it will be comparable to eDNA in the Netherlands and ADS in the UK.
Primary goals will be the long-term preservation, the dissemination and the aggregation of digital data. Furthermore IANUS will offer manuals, advice and best practice examples for handling digital data in the classical and ancient studies. Ongoing collaborative projects shall be supported with sync and share services to enable the exchange, the backup and the management of data across institutional boundaries.
Among the core services will be the IT-guidelines which comprise both accepted standards and best-practice examples and which IANUS is going to promote within the German community in order to help data producers to improve the data handling and to enhance the consciousness for the data quality within research projects.
The talk will provide an overview of the conceptual ideas, the testbeds, future work, and challenges to be faced, and has a focus on the IT-guidelines.
IANUS is very much a joint venture of different German institutions generating and providing primary research data – e.g. universities, research institutes, academies, state offices for cultural heritage, museums, etc. – on the one hand and infrastructural partners such as libraries and data centres on the other. The project is funded by the DFG and is coordinated by the DAI.