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Help & guidance Guides to Good Practice

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Appendix 2: pathways through the GIS guide to good practice

Mark Gillings and Alicia Wise, with contributions by Mark Gillings, Peter Halls, Gary Lock, Paul Miller, Greg Phillips, Nick Ryan, David Wheatley, and Alicia Wise. Revised by Tim Evans, Peter Halls and Kieron Niven (2011), Archaeology Data Service / Digital Antiquity, Guides to Good Practice

The following sub-section contains some suggested optimum documentation pathways. These relate to tasks you will frequently undertake during the course of GIS database design, use, maintenance and archiving. In each case a routine GIS task is identified, and the relevant documentation check-lists (i.e. the bulletted lists that feature throughout the guide) are highlighted. The pathways presented here are not intended to be exhaustive nor to be viewed as a prescriptive list. Tasks frequently overlap and it is often the case within archaeology that the individuals involved in data entry are also intimately involved in the tasks of overall database management and archiving.

Practitioners are thus encouraged to use the pathways presented here as templates to develop there own ‘good practice’ check-lists. These can be fixed to the wall alongside computers, attached to devices such as digitisers and scanners or distributed as ‘mini-guidelines’ to other practitioners within their organisation.

Digitising a mapsheet

Here the following documentation check-lists should be consulted each time a mapsheet is incorporated into the overall GIS database:

Scanning a mapsheet

Here the following documentation check-lists should be consulted each time a mapsheet is incorporated into the overall GIS database:

Integrating an aerial photograph

Here the following documentation check-lists should be consulted each time an aerial photograph is incorporated into the overall GIS database:

If the photograph is to be scanned:

If it is to be digitised:

If heads-up digitising is to be used:

Integrating SMR-based data

Here the following documentation check-lists should be consulted each time SMR data is to be integrated within the overall GIS database:

For the Spatial component:

For the attribute component:

Designing a GIS database

Here the following documentation check-lists should be consulted during the planning stage of the process:

Routine maintenance on a GIS database

Here the following documentation check-lists should be regularly consulted:

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