Opening access to heritage resources: risk, opportunity or paradigm shift?
41
- the known knowns: the accessible knowledge
- the known unknowns: the known but inaccessible
knowledge
- the unknown unknowns: the potential knowledge
advances gained by integrating all data, collabora-
ting with different domains and future research
avenues
Ideally one would reduce the size of the latter two
domains so that decisions, be they research, policy or
management, can be formed from a position of 'per-
fect', or 'near-perfect', knowledge with information
and data which is both accessible and well under-
stood. The 21 st Century is likely to see the global tran-
sition from data economies, to information econo-
mies (Wikipedia 2012a) and finally through to
knowledge economies (Wikipedia 2012b). It’s postu-
lated that better decisions are made: information and
knowledge economies have a better understanding of
the nature of any underlying data (its quality, vagaries
and uncertainties), have bodies of theory that can be
utilised to transform data into information and a bet-
ter understanding of the 'totality'. It is likely that this
will occur through the development of communities
of practice (Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder 2002)
that comprise of loosely coupled groups who are stu-
dying related problems.
The reality is somewhat different, rarely are decisions
made on the basis of all the available evidence. The
heritage sector is comprised of a network of agencies
and stakeholders. They perform a ränge of functions
from curating monuments or undertaking excavations
to advising governments and providing public access.
Each collects data. Unfortunately access to the corpus
of data held by these agencies is fragmented and
opaque. Many of the different distributed Historie En-
vironment Information Records (HEIRs) have erected
barriers to data sharing in the form of bureaucracy,
formats (particularly paper archives), incompatible
structures and legal/financial frameworks. The latter
point is important as the legal and financial frame-
work includes licences that inhibit downstream sha-
ring and re-use. This severely inhibits knowledge-
transfer. Important data resides in silos which effecti-
vely block access to different stakeholders on the
basis of awareness, privilege (access rights), cost and
security. Portals that aggregate content do exist, but
the majority only provide access to synthetic derivati-
ve, or generalisations. This lack of access to data leads
to downstream fragmentation in the data transforma-
tion environments (theory, processing methods etc.),
the knowledge structuring environments (Classificati-
on framework: dating, pottery sequences etc.) and
interpretations. Stakeholder requirements are not joi-
ned up: the Systems that facilitate the effective deve-
lopment of diverse 'communties of practice' (Wiki-
pedia 2012c; Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder 2002)
that could transform engagement do not exist.
Paradoxically, at a transnational level we are encoura-
ged not just to share our data but to integrate it. This
is core to the principles underpinning the EU-wide
INSPIRE directive (2012) and is implied in the
European Landscape Convention. Interoperability and
'fit-for-purpose' are key terms: data should be easy to
integrate across different platforms and it should be
made available in a way which the intended end-user
can actually use and understand. The issue here is not
'if we should improve access' but 'how we should
improve access'. Unfortunately, many of the datasets
which fall under the remit of INSPIRE are generalised,
or synthetic, and don’t reveal the richness of the
underlying raw data sources. INSPIRE and other open
data initiatives spearheaded by many Western govern-
ments have demonstrated that there is a real demand
for govefnment, and other, data. However, it is as yet
unclear how far they will penetrate into the heritage
sector.
This paper will consider these issues in relation to ope-
ning access to heritage resources. A movement that is
being called 'Open Archaeology'.
A vision for Open Archaeology
Imagine a scenario where data is managed in the fol-
lowing way. Fine grained data downloaded from geo-
physics Instruments or collected during, likely to be
fully digital, excavations is placed into a virtual 'fol-
der'. This folder synchronises the data with a cloud
based repository. This invokes a variety of Services
which generate description and discovery metadata
(essentially archiving the raw data and facilitating dis-
covery). Using ontologies and other semantic web
tools the data can interoperate as Linked Data
(Wikipedia 2012d) with the corpus of data collected
at this and other scales. Persistent Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URIs) or Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are
allocated for each object for long term referencing.
The underlying data quality can be evaluated and
improved in relation to the network of data, informa-
tion and knowledge in which the 'new' object exists.
When users want to query this resource they can eit-
her access it direetly (as a Service or a download) or
utilise mediation interfaces which have been specifi-
cally designed to transform the resource into specific
data and knowledge products that the user requires
(again as a download or a Service). The technical ter-
minology may Strip this of elegance, but these types
of environments are currently under development.
They represent a major conceptual shift from deposi-
ting 'static' documents, objects and data in archives
to developing dynamic, rieh and interlinked reposito-
ries of knowledge.
41
- the known knowns: the accessible knowledge
- the known unknowns: the known but inaccessible
knowledge
- the unknown unknowns: the potential knowledge
advances gained by integrating all data, collabora-
ting with different domains and future research
avenues
Ideally one would reduce the size of the latter two
domains so that decisions, be they research, policy or
management, can be formed from a position of 'per-
fect', or 'near-perfect', knowledge with information
and data which is both accessible and well under-
stood. The 21 st Century is likely to see the global tran-
sition from data economies, to information econo-
mies (Wikipedia 2012a) and finally through to
knowledge economies (Wikipedia 2012b). It’s postu-
lated that better decisions are made: information and
knowledge economies have a better understanding of
the nature of any underlying data (its quality, vagaries
and uncertainties), have bodies of theory that can be
utilised to transform data into information and a bet-
ter understanding of the 'totality'. It is likely that this
will occur through the development of communities
of practice (Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder 2002)
that comprise of loosely coupled groups who are stu-
dying related problems.
The reality is somewhat different, rarely are decisions
made on the basis of all the available evidence. The
heritage sector is comprised of a network of agencies
and stakeholders. They perform a ränge of functions
from curating monuments or undertaking excavations
to advising governments and providing public access.
Each collects data. Unfortunately access to the corpus
of data held by these agencies is fragmented and
opaque. Many of the different distributed Historie En-
vironment Information Records (HEIRs) have erected
barriers to data sharing in the form of bureaucracy,
formats (particularly paper archives), incompatible
structures and legal/financial frameworks. The latter
point is important as the legal and financial frame-
work includes licences that inhibit downstream sha-
ring and re-use. This severely inhibits knowledge-
transfer. Important data resides in silos which effecti-
vely block access to different stakeholders on the
basis of awareness, privilege (access rights), cost and
security. Portals that aggregate content do exist, but
the majority only provide access to synthetic derivati-
ve, or generalisations. This lack of access to data leads
to downstream fragmentation in the data transforma-
tion environments (theory, processing methods etc.),
the knowledge structuring environments (Classificati-
on framework: dating, pottery sequences etc.) and
interpretations. Stakeholder requirements are not joi-
ned up: the Systems that facilitate the effective deve-
lopment of diverse 'communties of practice' (Wiki-
pedia 2012c; Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder 2002)
that could transform engagement do not exist.
Paradoxically, at a transnational level we are encoura-
ged not just to share our data but to integrate it. This
is core to the principles underpinning the EU-wide
INSPIRE directive (2012) and is implied in the
European Landscape Convention. Interoperability and
'fit-for-purpose' are key terms: data should be easy to
integrate across different platforms and it should be
made available in a way which the intended end-user
can actually use and understand. The issue here is not
'if we should improve access' but 'how we should
improve access'. Unfortunately, many of the datasets
which fall under the remit of INSPIRE are generalised,
or synthetic, and don’t reveal the richness of the
underlying raw data sources. INSPIRE and other open
data initiatives spearheaded by many Western govern-
ments have demonstrated that there is a real demand
for govefnment, and other, data. However, it is as yet
unclear how far they will penetrate into the heritage
sector.
This paper will consider these issues in relation to ope-
ning access to heritage resources. A movement that is
being called 'Open Archaeology'.
A vision for Open Archaeology
Imagine a scenario where data is managed in the fol-
lowing way. Fine grained data downloaded from geo-
physics Instruments or collected during, likely to be
fully digital, excavations is placed into a virtual 'fol-
der'. This folder synchronises the data with a cloud
based repository. This invokes a variety of Services
which generate description and discovery metadata
(essentially archiving the raw data and facilitating dis-
covery). Using ontologies and other semantic web
tools the data can interoperate as Linked Data
(Wikipedia 2012d) with the corpus of data collected
at this and other scales. Persistent Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URIs) or Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are
allocated for each object for long term referencing.
The underlying data quality can be evaluated and
improved in relation to the network of data, informa-
tion and knowledge in which the 'new' object exists.
When users want to query this resource they can eit-
her access it direetly (as a Service or a download) or
utilise mediation interfaces which have been specifi-
cally designed to transform the resource into specific
data and knowledge products that the user requires
(again as a download or a Service). The technical ter-
minology may Strip this of elegance, but these types
of environments are currently under development.
They represent a major conceptual shift from deposi-
ting 'static' documents, objects and data in archives
to developing dynamic, rieh and interlinked reposito-
ries of knowledge.