An Open Context for Near Eastern Archaeology

The common use by archaeologists of ubiquitous technologies such as computers and digital cameras means that archaeological research projects now produce huge amounts of diverse, digital documentation. However, while the technology is available to collect this documentation, we still largely lack community-accepted dissemination channels appropriate for such torrents of data. Open Context aims to help fill this gap by providing open access data publication services for archaeology. Open Context has a flexible and generalized technical architecture that can accommodate most archaeological datasets, despite the lack of common recording systems or other documentation standards. It includes a variety of tools to make data dissemination easier and more worthwhile. Authorship is clearly identified through citation tools, including web-based publication systems that enable individuals to upload their own data for review, and collaboration is facilitated through easy download and "tagging" features. Near Eastern archaeologists will benefit from Open Context's flexibility to share a variety of content from diverse projects, no matter how large or small. This article was originally published in Near Eastern Archaeology (ISSN 1094-2076), Volume 70, Number 4, December 2007

Publishing Primary Data on the World Wide Web: Opencontext.org and an Open Future for the Past

More scholars are exploring forms of digital dissemination, including open access (OA) systems where content is made available free of charge. These include peer -reviewed e -journals as well as traditional journals that have an online presence. Besides SHA's Technical Briefs in Historical Archaeology, the American Journal of Archaeology now offers open access to downloadable articles from their printed issues. Similarly, Evolutionary Anthropology offers many full -text articles free for download. More archaeologists are also taking advantage of easy Web publication to post copies of their publications on personal websites. Roughly 15% of all scholars participate in such "self -archiving." To encourage this practice, Science Commons (2006) and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) recently launched the Scholar Copyright Project, an initiative that will develop standard "Author Addenda" -- a suite of short amendments to attach to copyright agreements from publishers (http://sciencecommons. org/projects/publishing/index.html). These addenda make it easier for paper authors to retain and clarify their rights to self -archive their papers electronically. Several studies now clearly document that self -archiving and OA publication enhances uptake and citation rates (Hajjem et al. 2005). Researchers enhance their reputations and stature by opening up their scholarship.Mounting pressure for greater public access also comes from many research stakeholders. Granting foundations interested in maximizing the return on their investment in basic research are often encouraging and sometimes even requiring some form of OA electronic dissemination. Interest in maximizing public access to publicly financed research is catching on in Congress. A new bipartisan bill, the Federal Research Public Access Act, would require OA for drafts of papers that pass peer review and result from federally funded research (U.S. Congress 2006). The bill would create government -funded digital repositories that would host and maintain these draft papers. University libraries are some of the most vocal advocates for OA research. Current publishing frameworks have seen dramatically escalated costs, sometimes four times higher than the general rate of inflation (Create Change 2003). Increasing costs have forced many libraries to cancel subscriptions and thereby hurt access and scholarship (Association for College and Research Libraries 2003; Suber 2004).This article originally published in Technical Briefs In Historical Archaeology, 2007, 2: -11

The modernist short story in Italy: the case of the 'Edizioni di Solaria'

This article investigates the role played by the modernist periodical Solaria (1926–34) as the Italian short story was being modernized. By offering a descriptive survey of the rarely studied corpus of fifteen short narrative volumes printed by the ‘Edizioni di Solaria’, the periodical’s minor publishing house, it sheds new light on the development of the short genre in this particular context. The two key questions addressed are, on the one hand, the validity of a recent hypothesis proposing Italo Svevo as a model for the ‘Solarian’ short story, and, on the other, the relationship between the codified novella/raccontoand other forms of short narrative prose derived from early twentieth-century avant-garde experimentation

Research and resources in North American studies : plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose ; sixth scientific symposium Frankfurt – 6. Wissenschaftliches Symposium Frankfurt, Saturday, 7 October 2006, panel 4, 9:45 – 11:00 a.m.

Large American research libraries have been acquiring - by purchase and by lease - huge multi-disciplinary electronic collections of primary and secondary source materials. For example, the Digital Evans and Canadian Poetry easily make available to scholars primary materials that once were scattered in libraries across North America and Europe. The American State Papers, 1789 – 1838 collection allows easier searching of fragile rare materials. Collections made by libraries digitizing their own holdings, such the Archive of Early American Images from the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, make research materials more discoverable and usable. Yet recent scholarship in American Studies by American and European scholars makes relatively little use of these new materials. Both disparities and congruities in what scholars use and what research libraries collect are apparent. Some simple reasons explain the dissonance. Furthermore, conversations with scholars suggest that materials and collections alone will not suffice to support research. Librarians’ skills and actions will increase the value of the new research materials

Expressing the tacit knowledge of a digital library system as linked data

Library organizations have enthusiastically undertaken semantic web initiatives and in particular the data publishing as linked data. Nevertheless, different surveys report the experimental nature of initiatives and the consumer difficulty in re-using data. These barriers are a hindrance for using linked datasets, as an infrastructure that enhances the library and related information services. This paper presents an approach for encoding, as a Linked Vocabulary, the "tacit" knowledge of the information system that manages the data source. The objective is the improvement of the interpretation process of the linked data meaning of published datasets. We analyzed a digital library system, as a case study, for prototyping the "semantic data management" method, where data and its knowledge are natively managed, taking into account the linked data pillars. The ultimate objective of the semantic data management is to curate the correct consumers' interpretation of data, and to facilitate the proper re-use. The prototype defines the ontological entities representing the knowledge, of the digital library system, that is not stored in the data source, nor in the existing ontologies related to the system's semantics. Thus we present the local ontology and its matching with existing ontologies, Preservation Metadata Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) and Metadata Objects Description Schema (MODS), and we discuss linked data triples prototyped from the legacy relational database, by using the local ontology. We show how the semantic data management, can deal with the inconsistency of system data, and we conclude that a specific change in the system developer mindset, it is necessary for extracting and "codifying" the tacit knowledge, which is necessary to improve the data interpretation process

Collecting in the National Interest

published or submitted for publicatio

A conservation policy statement for research libraries

Caption title.Bibliography: p. 20-23

Rebuild Iowa Office Quarterly Performance Report 3rd Quarter, April 2009

As the anniversaries of 2008 tornado’s and floods approach, the Rebuild Iowa Office vision of a safer, stronger and smarter Iowa is coming into sharper focus. While much more remains to be done, hundreds of displaced Iowans and businesses are on the road to recovery and the building blocks for communities coming together. While recovery is a marathon and not a sprint, the work done so far couldn’t have been accomplished without an extensive recovery planning effort and an unprecedented level of cooperation among local, state and federal governments, private citizens, businesses and non-profit organizations, there is a rebirth and recovery underway in Iowa