Open
archaeobotanical data is data about plant remains from archaeological
sites that is saved in a format that makes it available in formats
that will be long-lived, and is open (and therefore available for
reuse).
As
an archaeobotanist who has worked in commercial archaeology for more
than a decade, I have a back catalogue of data from Irish
archaeological sites, some of which has been published, much of which
has not. This blog is both an attempt to make that data more
available, and a means of documenting the process of converting the
data to open formats, archiving it and putting it online.
Digital preservation requires not only the secure storage of digital materials but also policies and workflows that ensure that such materials will be accessible and usable in the future...... Born-digital data are in most danger of being lost to future generations. (O'Carroll and Webb 2012, 8).
This
blog, and my attempts at creating an open archaeobotanical dataset,
has been prompted by a growing awareness of the fragility of the
digital archives of my research.
Tables
of archaeobotanical
results tend
to be prepared in a spreadsheet. In order to preserve these, and to
make them available in a format that can be incorporated into
different software in the future. To facilitate this, the
archaeobotanical dataset from my work is being converted into .csv
formats. This format, Comma Separated Values, is readable by machines
and humans, and is a very simple means of structuring data, and
has the added value of being supported by many different types of software.
For more details on .csv formats, see here.
References
O’Carroll, A., & Webb, S. (2012). Digital archiving in Ireland: national survey of the humanities and social sciences. National University of Ireland Maynooth. Retrieved from http://www.dri.ie/sites/default/files/files/Digital_Archiving_In_Ireland_2012.pdf
