Participants in the July 17 meeting outside the ASCSA offices in Princeton. Photo by Linda Ferry.
Since June 2006, American School staff have been engaged in a process of improving the management and dissemination of the ASCSA’s rich library and data collections. As part of this, a team of information specialists have been working with Thornton Staples, Director of Community Outreach and Strategy for the Fedora Commons Foundation Inc., to build a prototype digital repository that can securely store and present archaeological data collected by School projects. The prototype is now in its final phase of development, and a panel of leading experts in the application of digital technologies to archaeology recently met in Princeton to informally evaluate the work done so far and advise on next steps.
The evaluation panel consisted of Tom Elliott, Associate Director for Digital Programs, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW), New York University; Sebastian Heath, Research Scientist, American Numismatic Society & Academic Trustee of the Archaeological Institute of America; Worthy Martin, co-Director, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia; and Greg Palmer, co-Chair of the Internet2 Archaeology Special Interest Group / Executive Director, MAGPI, University of Pennsylvania. The School was represented by James Herbst, Architect, ASCSA Corinth Excavations; Carol Stein, Managing Editor, ASCSA Publications; and Thorny Staples. The workshop was convened by Charles Watkinson, Director of Publications, ASCSA; Chuck Jones, Head of Library Programs, ISAW (previously Head of Blegen Library, ASCSA); and Irene Romano, Administrative Director, ASCSA.
Although still in an early prototype phase, the sample ASCSA digital repository shows great promise. As well as ensuring that the digital data collected during modern excavations are archived in a way that allows this information to be studied and preserved for centuries to come, the repository allows archaeological information from a number of different sites to be searched in a quick and seamless way. Such cross-searching is an activity that would previously have taken hours of work in a good library to accomplish previously, and it is hoped that valuable new links between disparate archaeological collections will be found, and new scholarly insights gained.
There is still a long way to go, however, and the scholarly potential of repository development for the study of the ancient world will only be achieved through collaborative work as exemplified by the July 17 gathering.
The development of the repository, including the evaluation panel meeting, is being made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
