Ulf JAKOBSSON
(Swedish National Data Service (SND), Sweden)
Keywords: archaeology, archive, workflow, data, metadata
Abstract:
The Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model and its workflow provide the basis for SND’s activities and how we handle research data. This goes for all kinds of data that are deposited at SND, including archaeological data.
The workflow comprises all activities from the moment when researchers deposit data at SND and the following quality control (Ingest); the enhancement with metadata, production of codebooks (Data Management); policies and recommendations (Preservation Planning); archiving the data for long time storage (Archival Storage); up to the moment when we make the data searchable via web interfaces and accessible for new research (Access).
The OAIS model has been applied, for example, for the data of more than 360 archaeological surveys (388 datasets; shape-files, reports, Access databases, >40,000 files, >7.3 GB), a few thematic databases of archaeological data, and it is used for long-time storage of parts of the Swedish Rock Art Archive material (>12,000 tif-images, >1TB). The survey data is from one (out of 22) counties and from the 21st century only. SND have only received archaeological data during the past two years and expect a tenfold increase within the next few years.
Since SND did not have to take care for archaeological data until 2011, how it was structured, what metadata was needed (for SND as well as for the archaeological community), and how to document them had to be learnt and implemented. Furthermore SND had to inform the depositors about how they in turn could improve their data and metadata.
The GIS data are the first archaeological data that SND has made directly downloadable without any registration and free for anyone who wants to use them. These data are also among the first at SND where versioning has been fully implemented as well as geo-spatial information documented using the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) standard.