The Alexandria
Archive Institute

New Award Supporting AAI Research Fellow

December 15, 2016

We are happy to announce that Dr. Federico Buccellati will join the AAI in 2017 as a Research Fellow, thanks to the generous support of his project by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In an announcement from the NEH this week, Buccellati is named as one of 86 recipients in the Fellowships grant program. His grant is a Fellowship for Digital Publication, supported jointly by the NEH and the Mellon Foundation.

Federico is the principal investigator of Calculating the Costs of Ancient Buildings, an innovative publication project that makes the study of ancient architecture and the logistics of constructing monumental buildings more reproducible.

“Architecture is one of the main elements of material culture that archaeologists find in the archaeological record. One of the most important aspects of architecture is the process of construction leading up to the first use of the building. Cost-calculation-algorithms can be applied to the volumes of ancient architecture to explore the temporal, material or energetic ‘cost’ of the steps of that process. Up to now this has been done on an ad-hoc basis, with scholars finding appropriate comparisons. This project will produce an interactive interface where scholars enter volumetric data from their research. The algorithms draw from a wide variety of sources from across diverse cultural spheres. The final result will be a web-based interface published on GitHub so that future scholars can add to the algorithms and sources.”

We are very excited about this project because it ties together the types of data we work to curate with the kinds of reproducible analyses needed to strengthen the rigor of our knowledge about the past. The AAI and Open Context will provide Federico with technical assistance and support in developing, disseminating and preserving his publication outcomes.

Posted in: Awards, Fellowships, Grants, News, Projects

AAI Receives Grant to Expand a Gazetteer of North American Archaeology

April 12, 2016

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded the AAI a National Leadership Grant for a project that will expand the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA). Under the direction of Eric Kansa, Program Director for Open Context, the AAI joins many partners collaborating on the development of DINAA, a project originally launched with a National Science Foundation grant in 2012 and led by David G. Anderson (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) and Joshua Wells (Indiana University, South Bend).

The two-year IMLS-funded project will expand DINAA’s network of collaborating partners to include tribal archaeology professionals, library professionals, and museums as represented by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. The grant will focus on documenting the human presence on the North American landscape since the Pleistocene by aggregating archaeological and historical data from governmental authorities that manage heritage resources. DINAA will curate and provide open access to decades of data collection—all resulting from public investment in historical preservation.

DINAA has already integrated and published archaeological site data from 15 states in Open Context, encompassing the rich chronological, cultural, and anthropological metadata used by authorities and researchers alike. Researchers and the public can currently download over 380,000 site file records (with sensitive location, ownership, and other data redacted), free of charge and intellectual property restrictions. With IMLS funding, the awardees will continue to expand DINAA to eventually encompass an estimated two to three million archaeological sites across the United States. In doing so, DINAA will provide researchers, museums, libraries, government offices, stakeholders, and the general public with a powerful gazetteer of all known archaeological sites in the United States, as well as critical infrastructure for indexing widely distributed archaeological and collections databases, and tens of thousands of reports now languishing as nearly inaccessible ‘grey literature’.

A key focus of this project is to make stewardship and understanding of North American cultural heritage more inclusive. A crucial component of the project will consist of collaborating with tribal officials and their representatives across the country. Linked data and improved accessibility based on this consultation will better enable sovereign tribal nations to effectively manage and protect their ancestral cultural heritage, while improving government-to-government relationships between tribal nations, U.S. federal agencies, and associated state or museum entities.

The grant to the DINAA team is one of 20 grants to institutions totaling $6,339,441 under the National Leadership Grants for Libraries program. The program supports “projects that address challenges faced by the library and archive fields and that have the potential to advance library and archival practice with new tools, research findings, models, services, or alliances that can be widely replicated.” In congratulating the award recipients, IMLS Director Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew said these are “forward-thinking and creative projects that recognize some of the most pressing needs of the fields of library, archive, and information science,” and that the “long-term impacts of these IMLS investments will be evident for many years to come.”

About the IMLS: The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 35,000 museums. Our mission is to inspire libraries and museums to advance innovation, lifelong learning, and cultural and civic engagement. Our grant making, policy development, and research help libraries and museums deliver valuable services that make it possible for communities and individuals to thrive. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov and follow IMLS on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted in: Awards, Grants, News, Projects

Tags: featured

AAI Receives NEH Grant to Bridge Data Creation and Reuse

December 14, 2015

“We need the Humanities, now more than ever, because they give us access to the most fundamental and consequential dimensions and forces of our experience.”

– William D. Adams, NEH Chairman

Today, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced $21.8 million in funding for 295 humanities projects, including a Research and Development grant for a new AAI project launching January 1, 2016. The AAI’s 3-year project involves a longitudinal study of practices of creation, management, and re- use of archaeological data drawn from three geographical areas (North Africa, Europe, and South America) to investigate data quality and modeling requirements for re-use by a larger research community. The project will improve the quality of information collected during archaeological excavations across the globe, preserve this information, and share it with the public. Outcomes include exemplary open datasets, an expansion of Open Context’s data publishing services, and online educational modules. The project team includes researchers at Stanford University, the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the University of Michigan, and the Institute for Field Research. By funding this project, the NEH is showing a strong commitment to making quality humanistic research more accessible to the public.

About the National Endowment for the Humanities: Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.

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Tags: featured

Open Context to Receive AIA Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology

December 1, 2015

On January 7, 2016, during the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) in San Francisco, the AIA will present Open Context with the 2016 Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology. Open Context, the open access data publishing service developed by the Alexandria Archive Institute, is entering its tenth year online, with more than one million resources contributed by researchers worldwide.

The award recognizes “projects, groups, and individuals that deploy digital technology in innovative ways in the realms of excavation, research, teaching, publishing, or outreach” with a goal of “recognizing the value of digital scholarship and encouraging its practice.” Past recipients of the award include the Ancient World Online (2015) and Fasti Online (2014).

Posted in: Awards, Events

“Best Paper” Prize at 2014 International Digital Curation Conference

March 5, 2014

A collaborative research paper on data publishing won the “Best Paper” prize at the 2014 International Digital Curation Conference in San Francisco last week. Eric Kansa presented the paper Publishing and Pushing: Mixing Models for Communicating Research Data in Archaeology, which he co-authored with colleagues Benjamin Arbuckle and Sarah Whitcher Kansa. The three collaborated with a dozen colleagues on a large-scale project of publication, integration, and analysis of datasets from Anatolia. The IDCC paper presented lessons about data documentation and reuse that emerged from the project. Specifically, the study revealed that recording methods researchers assumed were commonplace actually varied widely from researcher to researcher. This kind of “under the hood” access to datasets that helps highlight inconsistencies in recording practices, will help drive improvements in data documentation. The paper argued for the implementation of a combined model of data publishing and version tracking. Data publishing ensures that datasets are seen as professional research outputs (like peer-reviewed publications). Version control, recognizing that datasets are dynamic and can be updated and built upon, ensures that any updates to a published dataset are clearly indicated and justified. Both publishing and versioning of datasets maximizes their potential for reuse. The research paper will be published in the spring 2014 issue of the International Journal of Digital Curation. The study was funded by the Encyclopedia of Life and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit the project page to learn more.

Eric Kansa accepts award for “best paper” at IDCC 2104. Image credit: Ashley Sands

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