Trustworthy characters:
Common issues for VREs and CWEs in archaeology
and textual studies
Stuart Dunn
King’s College London
E-Science Institute
23rd May 2007
The Archaeological research cycle
Attribution
Reference
and crossreference
Interpretation
Discovery
Publication
1
3
Mixture of 1 and 2;
georeferencing
Visual/cartographic/
Browse and click
4
2
Wiki/blog structures
Keyword/natural
language/controlled
vocabulary searching
1
Oct-00
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ADS Usage
800000
700000
Number of collections available by month scaled to raw access stats.
600000
500000
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200000
100000
0
Running average of change in 12 mo over the last 24 mo (%)
70
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SILCHESTER ROMAN TOWN: A VIRTUAL RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT
FOR ARCHAEOLOGY
Integrated Archeological Database (IADB)
LEAP project (Linking E-Archives and Publications)
http://www.intarch.ac.uk/
The Archaeological research cycle
Attribution
Reference
and crossreference
Interpretation
Discovery
Publication
Collaborative working environments
•
Open Source Critical Editions
• Identification of user requirements is a dynamic and ongoing
process
• Tracking usage through deep log analysis of user behaviour
 Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and Humanities
(UCL)
How should access to the editorial process be managed? Who
decides who gets to edit the text? Should it be managed at all?
• Directly linked to the non-tech issue of trust
• Directly linked to the tech issue of security,
authentication and access control. E.g. Shibboleth
• Access control of wikis
• e-Science certificates, issued under authority of
CCLRC by Registration Authorities (RAs)
How should version control be maintained?
• Essential to maintain author attribution for each version
• Version control of what?!
• Workflow history can become part of the intellectual content of
the edition
• Annotation - both human and machine-readable
Existing library and information (infra)structures
• How should OSCEs be cited?
• Who should be cited?
• Do they need to be closely integrated with existing LIS
systems?
• Digital libraries?
 T. Blanke, S. Dunn and A. Dunning, ‘Digital libaries in
the Arts and Humanities - Current practices and future
possibilities’, InScit conference (Oct ‘06)
•
Sustainability
VRE/CWE overlap: A shopping list
Authentication protocols
Workflows - MyExperiment
Documentation and identification of decisions (and decision makers)
Data quality control mechanisms
Collaborative support services
Formal methods for developing intuitive interfaces