[open-archaeology] Fwd: Ethics, archaeology and open data

[Anthony Beck]

Dear All,

Just a quick update in respect of the heritage ethics statement.

I had a meeting last week with people from “Inter-disciplinary Ethics
Applied” (IDEA: a centre for excellence in applied ethics at the University
of Leeds). They were very helpful and have offered to sit in on, and
potentially chair, any meeting we get sorted out with the UK archaeology
community.

Before any meeting is organised I'd like to go down and speak to the
Portable Antiquities Scheme team in London. Their experience at the coalface
may stop us wasting time and duplicating effort (I am quite time poor at the
moment).

My new baby is due sometime next week. I'm likely to be quiet for a while:
but will pick this up soon.

Best

Ant

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Anthony Beck <ant.beck at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> Sorry about the delay, but the day job got in the way.......
>
> Since the last post a lot has been going on behind the scenes. Many thanks
> to Jo and Steko for prodding me and keeping momentum going.
>
> Essentially the upshot is to take things forward by generating an ethics
> statement that reflects the stance that the OKF would like to take on ethics
> and how it relates to the deposition of raw data. To this end we've pulled
> together two EtherPad documents which you can all access and edit.
>
> The position statement (containing background, aims, supporting stuff and
> list of tasks) is available at this url http://pad.okfn.org/ethics
> The Ethics Statement is available at this url
> http://pad.okfn.org/ethicsStatement (marvel at the crystal clear content -
> it's essentially blank ;-)
>
> The former document provides more context and has a list of "things to do"
> to develop the ethics statement. Both documents are openly editable... so
> please do edit them and feel free to do some of the "things to do". If we
> get some movement then we can hold a physical meeting later in the year
> (September-ish). The aim of a physical meeting would be to resolve any
> problematic issues, if any, that can't be resolved on-line.
>
> Thanks for everything/anything you can do
>
> Ant
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 8:09 AM, Anthony Beck <ant.beck at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm going to the STAR heritage semantic web meeting in York tomorrow. I
>> should be fine to handle this. I'll update to the list.
>>
>> There's not an INSPIRE angle on the ethics side of the debate. However,
>> INSPIRE is a critical driver for public sector heritage organisations (IMHO
>> Scotland is far in advance of the rest of the UK in addressing this).  As
>> far as I am aware most organisations will take a schema mapping approach
>> from their holdings to the dictated schema. Job done. My problem with this,
>> if I do have a problem (I'm all for improving access to data holdings), is
>> that it is based upon integrating data that is already generalised (and
>> possibly stale). I would like to see the profession looking at alternative
>> approaches which incorporate excavation archives (probably linked data as
>> per my OKcon presentation). This should provide similar data granularity as
>> demstrated in IADB. The links between disarticulated datasets brings the
>> power. For example, if the site database was linked to the external pottery
>> specialist database (and in particular the classification schema), then when
>> the specialists re-classifies their types (and the data ranges) then this
>> can befed back directly to the excavation archive. Rebecca Jone is aware of
>> what I want to do in this area from a, failed :-(, science and heritage
>> fellowship bid (the feedback was excellent: from which I deduce the
>> competition must have been strong..... but it does mean that the hard-work
>> for any 'bid' has already been done and stakeholders have already expressed
>> interest).
>>
>> I'll be very interested to hear what Nick Poole has to say on this matter.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Ant
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Jo Walsh <jo.walsh at ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> dear all, catching up on postponed email today,
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/05/2010 20:19, Peter McKeague wrote:
>>>
>>>> However, on a personal note, I much prefer the approach taken
>>>> in some of the York Archaeological trust online publications where the
>>>> user can drill down and  explore and interact with the levels of
>>>> information in a site archive (eg
>>>> http://www.iadb.co.uk/mcross/index.htm). There is a structure, care and
>>>> presentation of an articulated argument in the  resource rather than
>>>> deposition of disarticulated datasets.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Peter - and Kate! - thanks for coming to Open Knowledge Scotland the
>>> other day. I hope you found it valuable - still not sure it worked.
>>>
>>> Now I'm appreciating all this insight into the intricacies of the
>>> profession. That is to say i'm out of my depth but aspire to swim up.
>>>
>>> On the OKF open-archaeology list there's been some talk of ADS hosting a
>>> workshop, and they seem willing, which would be great. Ant's heading there
>>> for a visit soon and can discuss timing, scope etc (when's this happening?
>>> could happily day trip it to York.)
>>>
>>> David Flanders from JISC was the one expressing interest in an open
>>> heritage workshop and potentially has some budget which could be used to
>>> support a few attendees from Europe and beyond - if there's an INSPIRE angle
>>> to the discussion then this would be necessary.
>>> flandda at jisc.ac.uk
>>>
>>> Jonathan Gray, OKF's community coordinator also talked with Nick Poole
>>> from Culture Grid about this, we exchanged some email, guessing he'd have a
>>> network to haul in to this sort of thing.
>>> jonathan.gray at okfn.org
>>> nick at collectionstrust.org.uk
>>>
>>> cheers, good luck!
>>>
>>>
>>> jo
>>> --
>>> Jo Walsh
>>>
>>> Unlock places - http://unlock.edina.ac.uk/
>>> phone: +44 (0)131 650 2973
>>> skype: metazool
>>>
>>
>>
>
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