[open-archaeology] starting

Thu Jan 28 16:29:12 UTC 2010

On 21 January 2010 12:55, Stefano Costa <stefano.costa at okfn.org> wrote:
> Dear friends and colleagues,
> now that a dedicated mailing list was created for the Working Group on
> Open Data in Archaeology, I'd like to start discussing the tasks that I
> think we should undertake in the following months. I and Jonathan Gray
> of the OKF have already agreed that there are some actions that are
> quite easy and should be completed as soon as possible, namely:
>
>      * write a post on OKFN blog
>              * Explaining background
>              * Why open data in archaeology?
>              * Introducing WG
>              * Mentioning mailing list

This sounds an excellent starting point, and I think point 2 is
especially important.

>      * writing a document that explores arguments in favour of open
>        data in archeology - to use as a manifesto and easy to refer to
>        when introducing our initiative

I think this can naturally come out of a shorter (para or 2)
discussion in the blog post.

>      * for those datasets that are already listed on CKAN but are
>        missing a clear license statement, make a public enquiry using
>        the Is It Open? service <http://www.isitopendata.org/> (a side
>        project of CKAN)
>
> On the long term, the two main parallel tasks I see are going to be:
>      * the "hunt" for open data, either by means of public enquiries
>        (see above) or targeted talks with colleagues and supervisors
>      * the collection of knowledge about national (and possibly
>        regional) standards for archaeological data, both from a
>        technical point of view (formats, thesauri, repositories and
>        catalogues, unique IDs) and from a legal/bureaucratic point of
>        view (who owns rights, who doesn't - and how much current
>        restrictions derive from law, opposite to habits)

This all sounds good. I think it would also be worth thinking about
what one would do with the open data once one has it -- i think this
relates to the why open data question above. Perhaps it would be worth
thinking of one exemplar project you could do that would use the open
data you find during the "hunt".

Regards,

Rufus Pollock
-- 
Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
http://www.okfn.org/ - http://blog.okfn.org/