[open-archaeology] Ethics, archaeology and open data

[Jo Walsh]

dear Ant, I enjoyed this clear and critical email very much.

On 11/05/2010 10:58, Anthony Beck wrote:
> I thought it about time to raise the spectre of open approaches and
> ethics. Of recent I have chatted to a number of people and organisations
> who want to open up their data. The conversation always comes back to
> the ethical issues. I’d like us to generate a statement or a set of
> ethical principles to help move this forward.

> I’m sure we can get
> advice/feedback on such a statement from national heritage agencies
> (RCHMS etc.), umbrella institutions (ICOMOS etc.), extant repositories
> (ADS, HEAcademy) and global affiliates (Earthwatch etc.).

>     * Do we need legal advice (can OKFN help in this capacity - you do,
>       after all, have some lawyers on board)
>     * Should we align this with other international organisations (I
>       think so: UNESCO, ICOMOS and EAC spring to mind)
>
> Any thoughts?

Has the Culture Grid "10 Linked Data Principles" been discussed here?
http://writetoreply.org/linkeddata/

  9. We must commit to commissioning Open Data, not Open Source

One can read it in one's head substituting "Linked Data" for "Open Data" 
and it reads reasonably well (though to my tastes a little aspirational 
and vague, however it is supposed to be selly stuff.

Here is the Europeana public domain charter which i am told is also 
designed as a convincer for cultural heritage institutions.
http://version1.europeana.eu/web/europeana-project/publications

So both Culture Grid and JISC have recently expressed interest on 
helping OKF organise a workshop on open issues in cultural heritage.
This could be a good chance to gain effort on - ideally, something like 
the Open Definition but for heritage efforts, that the different orgs 
mission statements, openess action plans etc, would be compatible with 
or not. Would this help?

There was a suggestion there might be space in JISC's London office
but it could also be good to do something at the ADS in York, a meeting 
in the middle sort of a place, packed with heritage.

> As an aside I believe the heritage system, or the UK heritage system at
> least, has too much of a bias towards the generation of synthetic
> material: time and money, IMHO, that could be better spent on putting
> the data in order and making it available. How can we realistically
> advocate informed regional research agendas (which we do in the UK) when
> the data to support these agendas is not available or generalised to
> such an extent that it is not useful?

A guinea-pig or prototype institution to generate some numbers - who?

best,


jo