[open-archaeology] [Antiquist] Re: Heritage Method Store Proposal

Sun Oct 24 12:40:12 UTC 2010

This message is intended to promote discussion of the Open Methods 
proposal in the Open Knowledge Foundation's coordination group.

Open Methods is a project proposal coming from Ant Beck and others in 
the OKF's Archaeology Working Group. Something that has yet to really 
start, so more of an incubating project, but not one OKF shouldn't be 
proud of. Access to algorithms, to the means by which the data enters 
the system, the activity which describes a path to data.

I like it.

The rest of this message is also line 3 of this spreadsheet here:
http://bit.ly/OKFNewProjectProposal

9/21/2010 8:04:53	Heritage Method Store	

Contact: Ant Beck ant.beck at gmail.com	

"The primary aim of a heritage method store is to stop the community 
re-inventing the wheel‚ by sharing methodologies and algorithms. There 
are a number of secondary benefits such as:
providing a place where methodology can be discussed and developed
an audit trail for method/algorithm developments
the ability to fork methodologies in light of different localities, 
technologies etc.
to be able to provide conceptual links between methodologies developed 
at different scales or for different environments etc."	"heritage, 
methodology, algorithm, respository, community"	"Not sure. It's 
important that we develop the community first and then the tools should 
become self explanatory.

<takenFromMyCommunityPitch>
Stefano Costa has suggested a wiki, which is a simple and easy tool. At 
the other end of the spectrum we could use something like MyExperiment 
or GitHub. MyExperiment allows the production of digital workflows that 
can transform data with algorithms (something that would be very useful 
for those of us doing numerical analyses, like the heritage remote 
sensing specialists). However, this may provide too much clutter for 
other users. Between these two tools are a spectrum of other 
technologies that may be useful (Stack Overflow, Mahara, etc.). However, 
the point is to build a community around the content that are prepared 
to discuss and improve methodologies (hence‚ an indexing service of 
available methods is not adequate). In the short term I feel that we 
should use tools that are accessible to a large audience rather than 
exclusive to a technologically sophisticated audience. This stops us 
being too prescriptive and allows us to extend tools as the community 
requires them.
</takenFromMyCommunityPitch>

I've been in touch with Mike Heyworth at the Council for British 
Archaeology and they are prepared/keen to commit some resource to this 
(people, server space, etc.). It falls under their outreach commitments: 
their mission statement is ""archaeology for all"". I also assume that 
the Archaeology Data Service would be prepared to commit similar 
resources plus a more skilled team (although I haven't checked yet).

Resource requests:
There are a number of hosting options that can come from the above.
Technical advice/support is requested.
Depending on technical advice then developers would be requested (I 
expect the community can add to this resource)

Getting people engaged is crucial to make this type of initiative work: 
perception could be everything. Making it clear that this is approved by 
the community (CBA), open in outlook (OKFN) etc. could add significant 
credance and be the difference between it working or not.

"	"Open Data and Content: data and content, or any other kind of 
resources, produced by the project will be openly licensed in a way that 
is compatible with the Open Definition: http://opendefinition.org/, 
Free/Open Source Software: software created by the project will be 
openly licensed  (i.e. in conformance with the OSI Open Source 
Definition), Public process and politness: the project will be run in a 
public way and encourage participation from outsiders. Interaction both 
within the project and the wider community will be governed by basic 
principles of tolerance, respect and politeness."