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

Thu Sep 23 14:40:17 UTC 2010

Dear Federico and all,

I'm all for crowd-sourcing and community engagement at whatever level. Many
of these things tie into the aspirations of the OKF as they require open
access to data, concepts and knowledge repositories. The common aim is to
get an active community behind the initiatives.

May I encourage you all to come into the 5pm skype meeting this afternoon to
discusss these topics

Best

Ant

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 3:34 PM, Federico Morando <
federico.morando at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Dear David and Cameron, dear all,
>
> thanks for your kind feedback and apologies for my original largely
> off-topic message: I admit that the link with the topic post was at most
> weak... my point, in fact, was that some simple technologies and
> methodologies could favor the kind of interaction with amateurs and
> enthusiasts that I was describing. Hence, I was pointing out that
> individuating these technologies could have been a nice by-product of the
> method store.
>
> I agree with your suggestion: let's keep these things separate. I will be
> happy to go on discussing these issues on the [open-archaeology] list, if
> you agree, and I would suggest labeling this topic as "crowd-sourcing
> archaeological data". [I can think about various, frequently very different,
> kinds of "crowd-sourcing", but I don't want to discuss them under the
> "Heritage Method Store Proposal": I've already done enough off-topic
> discussion! ;-)]
>
> Stefano, do you think that this discussion is worth the creation of a pad
> like the following:
> http://archeo.okfnpad.org/crowdsource-archaeo-data
> ? (I hope that your answer is "Yes", because I know that you're very
> sensitive to issues related to user generated content and the like.)
> I think that we could already start populating this pad with interesting
> points, since I definitely agree with Cameron about the reasons because of
> which a pilot related to ancient coins could be appropriate (and I would be
> happy to expand these points with specific examples).
>
> Best,
>
> Federico
>
>
> On 09/23/2010 08:47 AM, Cameron Neylon wrote:
>
> Dear All
>
> Just to give some context, my connection with this is that I’m helping out
>  the DART project with advice on data management, web infrastructure and how
> best to run an “open project”. My background is really in structural biology
> so I’m seeing this from an outsiders perspective on the technical side. One
> of my other interests is how to truly engage the wider community in research
> efforts (see the most recent slideshow at
> http://slideshare.net/cameronneylon for a recent rant on the subject). So
> this discussion is very close to my heart.
>
> I find the idea of a collective coin sharing side quite compelling from a
> number of perspectives. It does seem like a very good case where there is a
> community and there is a motivation to share information. It could also
> provide a good test bed for wider sharing of finds (my impression is that
> there is already a community that shares information here quite a lot) and
> also photos of archaeological significance (thinking crop for example).
> There is also a possible engagement activity here with taking high quality
> photographic equipment to meets to help people record their finds according
> to best practice I would guess.
>
> It would be very interesting to share for instance images of coins, the
> location of finds, and the provenance trail. I am guessing that there is
> significant swapping between collections and helping people to track that
> via the passing on of records could be very interesting. I would also
> imagine that people are a bit uncomfortable with sharing the location of
> finds (and there are probably both good and bad reasons for that) but it
> would be a very interesting thing to probe. If it encouraged a bit more
> recording of the discovery and recovery process that could presumably hardly
> be a bad thing. It would be worthwhile in this regard to talk to the Galaxy
> Zoo people as they have some infrastructure to support this kind of thing.
>
> I agree this is quite separate to a method store and its good to keep
> separate things separate. I can see how connections would form in the future
> but it would likely be better to let them evolve on their own in the first
> instance. I would encourage you to think about how to take these ideas
> forward tho.
>
> Hope this is helpful.
>
> Cheers
>
> Cameron
>
>
>
> On 22/09/2010 19:23, "david stott" <davstott at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   Federico:
> I entirely agree- this has been something I've been thinking about quite a
> lot recently and am really keen to get started on soon. It is, however
> something quite different from the method store i think.
>
> The idea that we can enrich our records with information from amatuer
> archaeologists and other interested people is one that a lot of
> archaeologists I've dicsussed it with seem quite sceptical about- but I
> think the idea that we can crowd-source archaeological data has a lot of
> advantages and could be a very powerful resource- especially in areas where
> there are not the curatorial resources to manage cultural heritage
> effectively. It is something that came up at the AARG conference recently
> and that Anthony Beck, Oscar Aldred, I and others discussed fairly
> extensively over the weekend. I'm busy tonight but would be delighted to
> discuss how´we can do more in future!
>
> Best,
>
> David
>
>
> On 22 September 2010 16:50, Federico Morando <federico.morando at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> I would like to add a perspective about this interesting topic: as a
> by-product of this (admittedly quite ambitious) project, some simple
> methodologies (and possibly some related how-to) could be recommended to
> various hobbyist and amateurs (e.g. coin collectors) wanting to share
> information online.
>
> In fact, this suggestion comes from the fact that I'm interested in these
> topics from two points of view: as a researcher working on public sector
> information (and content) related issues from a multidisciplinary point of
> view (law, technology & economics), taking into account the possibilities of
> interactions between information held by - say - public universities and
> user generated content; as a ancient coin collector (with a specific
> interest in relationships between amateurs and professionals and in legal
> schemes trying to minimize abuses and looting, maximizing the circulation of
> information: e.g. the portable antiquities scheme in UK and relates norms).
>
> For instance, coin collectors frequently share online pictures and other
> infos about their collections, but they tend to do so ignoring (at least in
> part) best practices and/or standards which could help in making a
> scientific use of these pieces of information (nonetheless, I think that
> today websites such as http://wildwinds.com/ may help archaeologists
> without a strong numismatic background in identifying ancient coins). The
> kind of how-to which could help coin collectors making their information
> more usable for researchers includes, for instance, best practices to add
> semantic information to online collections of pictures of ancient coins (RDF
> related technologies, such as RDFa, ontologies and dictionaries, etc.).
>
> Similarly, exposing some information about their findings, also
> archaeologist could sometimes benefit from interactions with amateurs: for
> instance, I have some friends working as archaeologist and they had to admit
> more than once that I know more than them (or their colleagues on a given
> excavation) about certain kinds of coins (e.g. late Roman bronzes or Celtic
> coins of northern Italy). That happens simply because I'm specialized on a
> very narrow subset of potentially archaeologically relevant knowledge, but
> this already allowed me to casually help one of them in identifying a worn
> coin simply looking at a picture, while my friend did not have many clues to
> start its identification (in fact, to me that flat bronze disk was clearly a
> Republican Roman as, but from the stratigraphic information one would have
> been pushed to think about medieval coins...).
> [There is interesting research going on in various fields about
> crowd-sourcing and I think that - up to a certain points - something could
> be done also in archaeology... it has been done for complex mathematical
> problems, but NASA also did that with a certain success for identifying
> craters on Mars, for instance...]
>
> So, to make a long story short, I think it could be nice to think about
> methodologies (and software tools) creating a bridge between professional
> archaeologist and various kind of amateurs. More specifically, I would
> suggest to do some pilot work on ancient coins, simply because there are big
> communities of coin collectors online, because researchers in this field
> always used the work of collectors quite intensively (many well known
> ancient coins catalogues have been written by collectors in the past), but
> also because I would happily volunteer as collector participating in such a
> pilot and/or proposing this idea to other collectors.
>
> Best,
>
> Federico
>
>
>
> On 09/21/2010 06:57 PM, Stefano Costa wrote:
>
> Il giorno mar, 21/09/2010 alle 10.09 +0100, Leif Isaksen ha scritto:
>
>
> - As a separate issue, a few of us have been toying with the idea of
> setting up a Stack Exchange site for Technology in the Humanities
> (http://area51.stackexchange.com/). This would have to be quite a
> large affair in order to work (i.e. we'd need to rope in antiquisters,
> digital classicists, HASTACers, and so on in order to reach a
> functioning scale) but it's Q&A format would nicely complement both
> the mailing lists (which are good for announcements and making
> personal contacts) on the one hand and more substantial knowledge
> articles such as the proposed methods wiki on the other. In any case,
> if anyone is interested in the initial phase of getting it off the
> ground please get in touch offlist.
>
>
> I will reply in more detail later, but for the moment being I'd like to
> point out that a very similar web platform is already available on OKFN
> infrastructure, e.g. see http://ask.okfn.org/en/
>
> The major difference (and advantage, IMHO) would be in self-hosting and
> capability to license everything under CC-BY.
>
> I've started drafting the current proposal at
> http://archeo.okfnpad.org/methodology-store - please feel free to
> contribute.
>
> Ciao,
> steko
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 22 September 2010 16:50, Federico Morando <federico.morando at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> I would like to add a perspective about this interesting topic: as a
> by-product of this (admittedly quite ambitious) project, some simple
> methodologies (and possibly some related how-to) could be recommended to
> various hobbyist and amateurs (e.g. coin collectors) wanting to share
> information online.
>
> In fact, this suggestion comes from the fact that I'm interested in these
> topics from two points of view: as a researcher working on public sector
> information (and content) related issues from a multidisciplinary point of
> view (law, technology & economics), taking into account the possibilities of
> interactions between information held by - say - public universities and
> user generated content; as a ancient coin collector (with a specific
> interest in relationships between amateurs and professionals and in legal
> schemes trying to minimize abuses and looting, maximizing the circulation of
> information: e.g. the portable antiquities scheme in UK and relates norms).
>
> For instance, coin collectors frequently share online pictures and other
> infos about their collections, but they tend to do so ignoring (at least in
> part) best practices and/or standards which could help in making a
> scientific use of these pieces of information (nonetheless, I think that
> today websites such as http://wildwinds.com/ may help archaeologists
> without a strong numismatic background in identifying ancient coins). The
> kind of how-to which could help coin collectors making their information
> more usable for researchers includes, for instance, best practices to add
> semantic information to online collections of pictures of ancient coins (RDF
> related technologies, such as RDFa, ontologies and dictionaries, etc.).
>
> Similarly, exposing some information about their findings, also
> archaeologist could sometimes benefit from interactions with amateurs: for
> instance, I have some friends working as archaeologist and they had to admit
> more than once that I know more than them (or their colleagues on a given
> excavation) about certain kinds of coins (e.g. late Roman bronzes or Celtic
> coins of northern Italy). That happens simply because I'm specialized on a
> very narrow subset of potentially archaeologically relevant knowledge, but
> this already allowed me to casually help one of them in identifying a worn
> coin simply looking at a picture, while my friend did not have many clues to
> start its identification (in fact, to me that flat bronze disk was clearly a
> Republican Roman as, but from the stratigraphic information one would have
> been pushed to think about medieval coins...).
> [There is interesting research going on in various fields about
> crowd-sourcing and I think that - up to a certain points - something could
> be done also in archaeology... it has been done for complex mathematical
> problems, but NASA also did that with a certain success for identifying
> craters on Mars, for instance...]
>
> So, to make a long story short, I think it could be nice to think about
> methodologies (and software tools) creating a bridge between professional
> archaeologist and various kind of amateurs. More specifically, I would
> suggest to do some pilot work on ancient coins, simply because there are big
> communities of coin collectors online, because researchers in this field
> always used the work of collectors quite intensively (many well known
> ancient coins catalogues have been written by collectors in the past), but
> also because I would happily volunteer as collector participating in such a
> pilot and/or proposing this idea to other collectors.
>
> Best,
>
> Federico
>
>
>
> On 09/21/2010 06:57 PM, Stefano Costa wrote:
>
> Il giorno mar, 21/09/2010 alle 10.09 +0100, Leif Isaksen ha scritto:
>
>
> - As a separate issue, a few of us have been toying with the idea of
> setting up a Stack Exchange site for Technology in the Humanities
> (http://area51.stackexchange.com/). This would have to be quite a
> large affair in order to work (i.e. we'd need to rope in antiquisters,
> digital classicists, HASTACers, and so on in order to reach a
> functioning scale) but it's Q&A format would nicely complement both
> the mailing lists (which are good for announcements and making
> personal contacts) on the one hand and more substantial knowledge
> articles such as the proposed methods wiki on the other. In any case,
> if anyone is interested in the initial phase of getting it off the
> ground please get in touch offlist.
>
>
> I will reply in more detail later, but for the moment being I'd like to
> point out that a very similar web platform is already available on OKFN
> infrastructure, e.g. see http://ask.okfn.org/en/
>
> The major difference (and advantage, IMHO) would be in self-hosting and
> capability to license everything under CC-BY.
>
> I've started drafting the current proposal at
> http://archeo.okfnpad.org/methodology-store - please feel free to
> contribute.
>
> Ciao,
> steko
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Scanned by iCritical.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> open-archaeology mailing list
> open-archaeology at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-archaeology
>
>
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