ADS all over the world

ADS Projects, Conferences, Staff, Uncategorized

Many moons ago, the ADS decided that it was going to try and increase its social media presence.  To this end, we started tweeting, and posting, and doing all sorts of social media like things.  From this, we began experimenting with the world of hashtags and found ourselves interacting with #Archive30.  It was through this trend of talking about a different thing from our archive and work that we came to the day of outreach.

Now outreach can mean something different to each person.  According to Google’s dictionary it means ‘an organization’s involvement with or influence in the community, especially in the context of religion or social welfare.’  So we were at conundrum.  How would we, an organization dedicated to the preservation of digital data going to show our many followers (who I’m sure were waiting with bated breath) that we left our offices every once in a while?

Well, if there is one thing that I enjoy, it’s a good old visualization of information.  And that is how the lovely map below was made.

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Gems in the Library #2 The Underhill Archive

Archives, Data Reuse, Digital Preservation, Open Access, , , , , , ,

It’s almost the weekend so obviously this was the right time have fun with some of the beautiful images to be found in the HMJ Underhill archive, compiled by Oxford University and available in our archives. Also I felt like brushing up on the old QGIS skills. So I decided to georeference some of these images and see how they match up with modern maps.

These images all come from the Underhill Archive available on the ADS Archive. The archive was put together by Deborah Harlan and Megan Price at the University of Oxford. It consists of hand painted glass slides of British megaliths as well as maps of ancient Britain and the areas surrounding prehistoric monuments.

Northern Roman Britain georeferenced here on open street maps. The map was probably drawn around 1895.
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CH-CH-CH-CH-Changes: Improvements to our ADS-Easy and Oasis Images Services

ADS Projects, ADS-easy

Over the last few months, ADS beavers have been busy in the background making much needed updated and improvements to our electronic submissions systems. Over the last couple of years, we have listened to your comments, digested the constructive criticism in your emails, bought a job lot of earplugs for those exasperated phone calls and tried our best to address them. While we cannot remove all those requirements for metadata, or reduce the costs of deposition, what we have tried to improve is the process of deposition to make it as streamlined and seamless as possible.

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The ADS Grey Literature Library reaches a milestone!

Uncategorized, , , , ,

As well as welcoming our lovely new staff members, we also have yet more good news…

|Author: OakleyOriginals|

… The ADS Library now holds over 50,000 downloadable grey literature reports!

Thank you to all the archivists who have worked hard preserving, archiving and disseminating these files and to all of our depositors who continue to make our Grey Literature Collections such a rich resource!

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Gems in the ADS Library #1

Archives, Open Access, , , , , , ,

After spending time working on the ADS library I thought it would be fun to share with you a few gems of the library content. Subsequently I fell down numerous rabbit holes. It was quite hard picking articles as there is so much there but in the end I decided to discuss two articles which explore archaeology, computing and digital environments. I found these articles fascinating because they challenge my entire concept of heritage and archaeology, especially how its applied to new technology. So I hope you don’t mind me going off on a tangent in discussing them. I’m planning to do a few posts in this series with a different large theme each time as way of showcasing how awesome it is to have all this open access data available.

Archaeology of Virtual Universes

We’re all away of how the pace of development of technology seems to accelerate faster and faster; a handaxe might have been a standard tools for millennia, but chances are the computing technology you used ten years ago is defunct. Dealing with obsolete formats, in both their hard and soft versions, is a big part of a digital archivists job, have a look at the story of the Newham Museum Archaeological Service Archive to find out more.

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My first Six Weeks as a Digital Archives Assistant

Digital Preservation, Staff,

It’s been six weeks since I started working at the Archaeology Data Service and went down the rabbit hole and into a world of checksums, AIPs, OMS, CMS and DROIDs. I knew fairly little about digital preservation before starting, so had no real idea of what I might be letting myself in for. Alongside trying to keep abreast of the plethora of acronyms, I’ve been involved in some interesting and varied projects so far and I’m very grateful for how welcoming the ADS team has been.

Following a BA in archaeology at the University of Durham, I moved to London to study the archaeology of Egypt and the Near East at UCL, with a focus on GIS and computational methods in archaeology. I developed an interest in archives and collections documentation during a placement at a museum during my master’s degree. Admittedly, I’d anticipated taking a more traditional route of working with material objects and I knew quite little about digital collections. Joining the ADS is my first foray into digital preservation and I’m excited to be learning about such an interesting subject and working with archaeological data. I’m especially looking forward to developing my technical skills; and of course still being able to have fun with GIS from time to time.

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Digging Data: A new intern at ADS

Project, Staff, , , ,

Hello all, Anastasia here, I’ve just started a placement here at ADS. I’m currently doing a masters degree in “Outreach and Development for Archaeological Heritage” at the University of Paris 1. I started off in archaeology on a research route (love Neanderthals) but wanted to start working more with the public (I want everyone to love Neanderthals as much as I do). I chose to do a placement at ADS because I wanted to learn more about how we make scientific and historical data accessible and relevant, not just for other archaeologists but also to the public at large.

Excavations at Callao Cave in the Philippines, before I discovered the joys of databases.
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Headed off into uncharted waters: My first month at the ADS

ADS Projects, Archives, Staff

Hello all!  Teagan here to tell you about my first exciting month at the ADS.  First a bit about myself.  Yes, that is a ship on my head.  What better way to get myself in ship shape to bring you the best blog possible? 

I was born and raised in sunny California where I pursued my dream of becoming a pirate archaeologist by completing a BS in Civil Engineering (ok, I had a bit of trouble reading the treasure map).  From there I flew over the seven seas to arrive in York where I received my MSc in Archaeological Information Systems before I struck gold and began working here at the ADS as a digital archives assistant.

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‘It Makes You Feel Like You Are Working as a Real Scientist’

Archives, Audience and Usage, Data Reuse, Open Access, Publication

Using data provided by the ADS for digital archaeological teaching and learning at the University of Vienna

Guest Post By: Dominik Hagmann & Fabiola Heynen

Dominik Hagmann is an university assistant at the Department of Classical Archaeology and lecturer at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Fabiola Heynen is a master’s student in classical archaeology at the University of Vienna.

This is the first in a series of guest posts exploring the re-use of digital data preserved and disseminated by the ADS. This post explores how various data-sets preserved by the ADS are re-used as a teaching resource at the University of Vienna.

Framework

Since 2017 a newly established series of courses at the Departments of Classical Archaeology as well as Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna want to provide interested students with basic knowledge about digital archaeology in theory and practice. The students acquire first experiences through various practical exercises using and discussing free and open-source software (FOSS) on topics like the application of 3D photogrammetry for the archaeological record or spatial analysis with the help of a geographic information system (GIS).

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