In April 2006, we proudly launched the Beta version of Open Context, our new open access publication system that enables researchers to distribute their primary field data, notes, and media (images, maps, drawings, videos) on the World Wide Web. Open Context provides an easy to use, yet powerful, framework for exploring, searching, and analyzing excavation results, survey data, and museum collections.  Open Context represents an important advance. For the first time, research data can be pooled, compared and explored in a “Web 2.0” system that enables the community to add value, organization, and meaning to the content. Open Context was developed over two years with a series of grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

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Activities:

Advances in World Archaeology Digital Access

NINEVEH, IRAQ: The AAI has been contracted to help a new NEH funded initiative to publish UC Berkeley excavation results from Nineveh in Open Context, the AAI’s open access data sharing system. The goal of this project, led by David Stronach and Eleanor Wilkinson, is to create a comprehensive open-access resource of all of the excavation results, including field data, images, and relevant scholarly information about the history and archaeology of Iron Age Nineveh, a UNESCO World Heritage watch list site. At the same time, we are collaborating with the Global Heritage Fund and have recently published a small portion of their architectural and historical documentation and conservation work on Open Context here.

PETRA, JORDAN: December 2006 saw the adoption of Open Context by another World Heritage site, the breathtaking site of Petra, Jordan. Digital content from the extensive Brown University excavations of the Great Temple at Petra, led by Professor Martha Joukowsky, will serve as an exemplary model of open access to world cultural heritage and educational material. Professor Joukowsky embraces the idea of open access and aims to launch the Petra digital content in Open Context along with her print publication of the second volume of excavations.

Activities:

Raising Awareness of Open Access
What is “Open Access” and what does it have to do with you? These are questions hundreds more archaeologists can now answer, thanks to community outreach initiatives in 2006. How did we do it? Giving away food, alcohol, and money help to get people’s attention. This year, the AAI hosted two events to raise awareness and participation in open access. At the Mexico City meeting of the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ), we launched the first of a series of Open Zooarchaeology Prize competitions for junior scholars. Eleven entrants (roughly 10% of the junior attendees of the conference) submitted high-quality images and accompanying text to the online competition for a $500 prize. The entries were judged by their academic merit, their clarity, and their ability to be reused. All entries were submitted under open licenses and are being downloaded daily by interested researchers and educators.

The second event this past year was at the American Schools of Oriental Research meeting in Washington DC in November 2006. The AAI hosted the Junior Scholar Roundtable Luncheon, an event attended by 40 enthusiastic young researchers. At this event we explained that Open Access is removing barriers to serious research by putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature on the Internet, free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What’s in it for these young scholars is the competitive advantage it gives them for increased exposure, promotion, sharing, and collaborations. We hope to reach thousands more this year with our continuing events and prizes.

Blog News
The Society for American Archaeology’s new Digital Data Interest Group (DDIG) has a blog, thanks to DDIG convenor and AAI Executive Director, Eric Kansa. Eric set up the blog to give the DDIG an online voice to express interests and concerns regarding the direction of digital advances in cultural heritage preservation and access. The DDIG blog provides news, commentaries, and interviews with digital data initiatives and leaders in the field. DDIG members will have the chance to meet face-to-face and provide feedback on this service at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in Austin this April. All DDIG members, and others interested in expressing their point of view, are welcome to comment or post to the blog, found at http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/blog.

Thanks to our Supporters
The AAI has demonstrated an increasingly diversified support base, and was rewarded for this in 2006 with a final determination of our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status from the IRS! Key support comes from both long-standing and new contributors. We are delighted to announce a continued and expanded partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. As one of the Hewlett Foundation Education Program’s Open Educational Resources projects, the AAI has developed Internet tools and addressed incentives for scholars to openly share the primary research data. Past awards from the Hewlett Foundation have supported the AAI’s development and implementation of Open Context.

With this most recent grant of $250,000 from the Hewlett Foundation (in support of general operating activities) the AAI will move into a new phase, that of promoting the creation and use of Open Educational Resources. To this end, the AAI will use Open Context as an open-sourced platform to disseminate field research, museum collections, and other cultural heritage media. Convenient Web-based access to such resources will make significant contributions for both instruction and research. The AAI will further promote access to scholarship by organizing a series of Open Archaeology Prize competitions at national conferences over the next two years. The AAI looks forward to collaborating with the Hewlett Foundation to promote open access in the scholarly community.

The AAI continues to receive the generous support of Doris and Donald Fisher, whose contribution this year will help us explore the application of the Open Context system beyond archaeology. In addition, the AAI received a generous donation from the Joukowsky Family Foundation, who provided funds to secure a dedicated server for Open Context for the next five years.

Events: Conferences and Workshops
Following an influential publication, entitled “Protecting Traditional Knowledge and Expanding Access to Scientific Data”, AAI Executive Director Eric Kansa has been invited to speak at a series of conferences and workshops on the topic. 2006 saw him travel to New Haven for the Access 2 Knowledge conference where he spoke on a panel that attempted to reconcile the goals of making knowledge more accessible with the goals of protecting indigenous culture from misappropriation. In June, Eric traveled to Rio de Jenairo for the hugely successful iSummit, a meeting of iCommons, the international contingent of Creative Commons. Eric came home from Rio not only with a tan, but also with a partnership with iCommons to work together to fund digitization initiatives for cultural heritage. Finally, in December, he traveled to Australia for another conference on protecting indigenous culture, this time emphasizing the importance of how access to technologies can be important tools to empower native communities.

In April 2007, the AAI’s participation in the annual Society for American Archaeology meetings in Austin includes several sessions on issues surrounding digitizing archaeology. Click here to access the preliminary program.

Events: Open Archaeology Prizes
In 2006, the AAI announced plans for a 3-year series of Open Archaeology Prizes. These prizes are targeted at junior researchers and offer $500 for the best online contribution of high-quality, easily reusable, open access content. Sarah Whitcher Kansa, Assistant Director of the AAI and a practicing zooarchaeologist, launched the first prize in the series at the International Council for Archaeozoology conference in Mexico City. Prizes went to Christian Gates St-Pierre (Canada) and Ana Belen Marin Arroyo (Spain). Nine other competitors submitted excellent examples of educational, reusable content. Click here to view all competing projects.

About

The Alexandria Archive Institute was founded in 2001
as a not-for-profit organization as described
in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Employer Identification Number: 91-2146202

The Alexandria Archive Institute
125 El Verano Way
San Francisco, CA 94127

Tel: (415) 425-7380

Email: contact@alexandriaarchive.org

Feature Article: Open Context (cont.):
Open Context is a highly flexible database that enables researchers to publish their primary field data, notes and media (images, maps, drawings, videos) on the World Wide Web. Open Context provides an easy to use, yet powerful, framework for exploring, searching and analyzing excavation results, survey data and museum collections. We designed Open Context to help make archaeological and related research easier to find, explore, understand and reuse.  Additional features include:

• Folksonomy: Open Context goes “Web 2.0”, with a tagging system that enables users to classify and organize artifacts and other items any way they see fit.
• Citation: A citable reference and stable web-link is created for each item in Open Context, making citation and retrieval easy.
• Online Discussion: Open Context automatically registers references from weblogs, enabling people to add value to Open Context materials simply by citing them in their weblogs.
• Easy Downloads: Open Context makes it easy to retrieve data in large tables for analysis and graphing.

Open Context currently contains over 100,000 items from ten projects, including over 2000 images from sites in Turkey and Iraq. Projects range from comparative collections to archaeological excavation data to slide collections. Of particular interest to users is that each item in the Open Context database can have multiple, high-quality images associated with it. The searchability and easy access to these images provides an excellent resource for teaching. Open Context is currently taking in new projects, including excavation data from Nineveh (Iraq), Petra (Jordan), and a massive zooarchaeological reference collection from Mesoamerica and the southern United States. One of our primary aims for these projects is to be able to develop customized banners for each of these projects so that users will see the branding associated with an item when it pops up in Open Context.

Here's how Open Context works:

The first screen takes you to a map of the world, marked with locations of projects in the Open Context system. You can click through this map to browse the various projects or you can go to the New Search screen.

In the Search box you can type any words you wish. In this example, I have typed "canis cranium" to see how many dog skulls are in the system.

Your search results are listed as a table. You can narrow your search results in many ways, including listing only items with photographs.

If you click on an item, you are taken to a Details screen, where you see photographs and other detailed information about that item.

You can also click on an image to obtain a higher resolution version of it. Perhaps most importantly, on the bottom of the screen, for every single item in the system, is copyright information of the contributors choosing. This explains how you must attribute the data contributor if you choose to use this item outside the Open Context system.

By clicking on "Cite this Item", you obtain citation information for that specific item. All items in the Open Context system have stable URLs, which means users can cite an item and be assured that item will be accessible at that same Web address for years to come.

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