We’re proud to introduce a new series of open educational resources (OERs) from the Data Literacy Program (DLP) of the Alexandria Archive Institute (AAI). These are our Data Story Shorts. The Shorts are smaller, bite-sized Data Stories about specific topics, skills, or data. In this article, we’ll explain some of the differences between our Shorts and full-length Digital Data Stories and introduce some Shorts.
Data Story Shorts are small, standalone Data Stories that allow archaeology-inclined audiences to gain, practice, or learn about certain topics more quickly. This succinct series of stories include works adapted from full length Data Stories, supplements to existing Data Stories inspired by our peer review process, and works made specifically for this shorter format.
Regardless of origin, each short consists of a single article on the AAI news page. This makes them more approachable and easier to use. It also means that there are no Part Twos, different versions, or supplementary resources, like lesson plans, included with the Shorts. While, like our full length Data Stories, they can be incorporated into classes for those who desire or require it, educators will need to review the Shorts themselves to see if they work for their community. We hope that the Shorts act as references that students, professionals, educators, and members of the public (re)turn to when they need help with a specific skill, exploring a data set, addressing an encapsulated question, or learning about specific content.
By focusing on specific content, we limit the length of Shorts, making it easier for us to share resources quickly because there’s less to edit. In addition, we’re adapting our review process for the Shorts. Over the years, the DLP has used multiple approaches to community-based review and testing. While improving the quality of our multi-part OERs, external evaluation takes time and fails without committed reviewers.
So instead of waiting for external review, we’ll release the shorts like we have our Digital Data Story preprints. That means the resources are available for use after internal AAI reviewing and editing. If folks feel strongly about the material, they can still leave a peer review. However, peer review won’t prevent others from using that material as is. This allows more people to use the resource while also offering a way to improve the shorts in the future.
Although we won’t wait for external review before sharing these resources, many Data Story Shorts have been through one of our community review processes. For example, we tested or peer-reviewed the full-length version of any Shorts abridged from other Data Stories and we wrote some Data Story Shorts in response to peer review. When this isn’t the case, each Data Story Short, like every DLP article on the AAI news, is internally reviewed before publication so they’re quality resources.
We’ll be publishing our first formal Data Story Short, How to Make Your Own (Archaeological) Book Club, next week. But if you’re wondering if any other AAI news articles were secretly Data Story Shorts, we’d say yes! The Data Literacy Program page already lists Whose Heritage? Using material culture to celebrate AANHPI heritage month” as a Data Story Short. In that article, we considered whether the Asian Stoneware Jars data publication from Open Context was appropriate for celebrating Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander American (AANHPI) heritage month.
As an article that combines narrative with data, it fits the definition of Data Story and as a published article on the AAI news page, it fits our other criteria for a Short. In the future, we’ll do some minor updates to the article page to make it match our new Data Story Shorts aesthetic but it already embodies everything we want from a short, so we encourage you to explore that story.
We hope to release even more shorts in the next year, so stay tuned to the AAI news to hear more about our upcoming OERs!
Update: In July 2025, we updated some links in this piece to DOIs and added the following image credits: “Data Story Shorts logo” and “AAI-OC_DataStoryPublished_Header-HowToBookClub” by Paulina F. Przystupa and L. Meghan Dennis of the DLP/ CC BY include an, occasionally adapted, Adobe Stock image used as the DLP and AAI Reads logos featured in those two pieces.
