In previous posts (here, here, and, most recently here), I have discussed what I see as the benefits of building a system of linking archaeological datasets together. Though I haven't been able to spend much time this academic year on building the EWHADP database, the people at DINAA have been forging ahead. I am third author on a poster that will be presented at the SAA meetings next week that will discuss the progress that's been made on using DINAA to cross-link datasets:
The poster will be at session titled "The Afterlife of Archaeological Information: Use and Reuse of Digital Archaeological Data" on Thursday, April 16, from 6:00-8:00 pm in Grand Ballroom A. I can't be there, but many of the cool kids involved with the project will be, and you should go and talk to them. Linking together independent datasets is going to be a real game changer for archaeological research in this country, and these are the people that are making that happen.
We've done a "pilot" run linking the entries in the most recent published version of the EWHADP dataset to the entries in DINAA. The electronic matching was not complete: several states remain to be included in DINAA and the attempt to link the datasets revealed some other issues that will need to be resolved (both on my end and their end). That's exactly the point of doing this sort of thing, though: someone has to go first and figure it out. I've created an entry in my Database section to provide an Excel file that contains the automatically-generated hyperlinks to site records in DINAA. The interface from the DINAA end is here (it also references data from the Paleoindian Database of the Americas).
This step of engineering the first links is important. It is moving linked data from the realm of the hypothetical to the world of the actual. There is much work ahead to really get things knit together, but what they've done so far is not insignificant. I will be able to devote some time to the EWHADP after I'm moved down to South Carolina in the Fall. Stay tuned!
- Sarah Kansa, Eric Kansa, Andrew White, Stephen Yerka and David Anderson--DINAA and Bootstrapping Archaeology’s Information Ecosystem
The poster will be at session titled "The Afterlife of Archaeological Information: Use and Reuse of Digital Archaeological Data" on Thursday, April 16, from 6:00-8:00 pm in Grand Ballroom A. I can't be there, but many of the cool kids involved with the project will be, and you should go and talk to them. Linking together independent datasets is going to be a real game changer for archaeological research in this country, and these are the people that are making that happen.
We've done a "pilot" run linking the entries in the most recent published version of the EWHADP dataset to the entries in DINAA. The electronic matching was not complete: several states remain to be included in DINAA and the attempt to link the datasets revealed some other issues that will need to be resolved (both on my end and their end). That's exactly the point of doing this sort of thing, though: someone has to go first and figure it out. I've created an entry in my Database section to provide an Excel file that contains the automatically-generated hyperlinks to site records in DINAA. The interface from the DINAA end is here (it also references data from the Paleoindian Database of the Americas).
This step of engineering the first links is important. It is moving linked data from the realm of the hypothetical to the world of the actual. There is much work ahead to really get things knit together, but what they've done so far is not insignificant. I will be able to devote some time to the EWHADP after I'm moved down to South Carolina in the Fall. Stay tuned!
RSS Feed
