Arleyn SIMON1 / Gerald FARIN1 / Christian LÜBKE2, 3 / George INDRUSZEWSKI2, 3 / Jeremy ROWE4
(1Arizona State University, Tempe, USA / 2University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany / 3University of Greifswald, Germany / 4Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling)
Purpose: 3rd progress report on an international digital library of medieval ceramics technology.
Methodology/Approach: The Ceramic Technologies Digital Library (CTDL) is a digital database for online access to medieval ceramics from Central Europe. At the first level of data collection, we employ the latest laser scanning technology to acquire precise measurements of the 3D shape, decoration and texture of the ceramic vessel, complemented by digital imagery of the same vessel. The data are transferred through a terminal server to the main server at the EMA University in Greifswald, Germany, and stored in two file sizes. Dublin core principals are used to define the project metadata, which are managed through a MySQL database. Once data are secured and ready for presentation, these are made available online through the CTDL website (www.ctdlib.eu and www.ctdlib.org). The website has its own dedicated web-server at the Computing Centre of the EMA University in Greifswald, and space for testing on the ARI server at ASU, Tempe, Arizona (http://archaeology.asu.edu).
Results: The first two years were used for development and testing; the 2D images of the scanned collections are currently available (through http://www.4homepages.de/ technology). The 3rd year will add the capability to view and rotate 3D images of ceramic vessels from the Germania-Slavica study area using 3D compression technology (http://www.3dcompress.com). The focus will be on shifting from the developmental phase to the implementation phase, and to broaden access to new collections and capabilities.
Keywords: ceramic library, digital modeling, 3D scanning, web-based archive, cultural interaction