Ancient Righting: Archaeologists & Copyright

iCommons.org - Ancient Righting: Archaeologists & Copyright 6/1/10 10:08 This website is now meant for archival purposes only and will not be updated. Please use the new icommons.org instead. home articles nodes resources calendar profiles isummit magazine contact about help icommons.org/tag/ search Ok type a tag | tag cloud go home · articles · ancient righting: archaeologists & copyright Ancient Righting: Archaeologists & Copyright 1 vote Francis Deblauwe · Saratoga, CA (United States) · Jul 07th, 2008 4:59 pm · 39 votes · no comments made Collating online collections. Study of 13 cultural heritage collections online · Articles Scholars, Looters and Stewardship of the Past · Articles Egypt's Attempted 5000 Year Copyright Extension · Articles Hamburg humbug: Chinese terracottas, authenticity and exhibitions · Articles UEE: Sample Article (advanced keyword search) - the entry http://archive.icommons.org/articles/ancient-righting-archaeologists-copyright Page 1 of 4 iCommons.org - Ancient Righting: Archaeologists & Copyright Ma‘at , by UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology From 6-8 June, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a scholarly symposium at UCLA in sunny Southern California: the UCLA/Getty Storage Symposium. Preservation and Access to Archaeological Materials. I live blogged it on the IW&A Blog. Of course, the papers were very specialised and/or technical, and normally only interesting for archaeologists and conservators. However, one issue that reoccurred several times was how to deal with copyright inside a very specialised, niche academic discipline. Archaeologists, so peculiar Archaeologist are typically spread out over all kinds of departments at different universities and institutions: history, classics, anthropology, area studies, art history, geology, metallurgy, etc. They often are looked upon as curiosa by their more "mainstream" departmental colleagues. All this makes the way they publish and how it contributes to their career especially critical. The silver standard for their career is the peer-reviewed article, the gold one being the monograph, i.e., a book on a specific topic put out by an academic press. These are the stepping stones for advancement, heck, even for getting a professional career going in the first place. Some symposium speakers reiterated their support for web-based publications. The advantages are well known: faster publication time, ability to include tons of photos in colour, accessibility creating higher use, reduction in cost, etc. But the fact remains that when a young professor is trying to get tenure, a peer-reviewed paper output still is what matters. The web is still seen by many in the "old guard" as a hobby, not serious scholarship. The paradigm is slowly changing though. Several scholarly online-only, open access publications now exist: see my iCommons.org article Archaeologists Coming Out of the Cold. 6/1/10 10:08 Preserving Digital Heritage for Perpetuity… or at Least for the Next 25 Years · Articles OA Academia in Repose · Articles You Can’t Share What You Don’t Have · Articles Who decides what to digitize? · Articles Universities, the Cloud and E-Scholarship · Articles Big Data (Review) · Articles Lessig on Digital Barbarism Lawrence Lessig has posted a review of David Halperin's recent book, Digital Barbarism. Online encyclopedia of ancient Egypt At the symposium, the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egytology (UEE) was introduced. It is meant to replace and improve upon the old bulwark of traditional paper publishing: the Lexikon der Ägyptologie (7 tomes, 1975-1992). There will be free public access to core UEE materials and functionality, and an "enhanced" access to members who support the UEE financially. This is how some of the qualms of potential contributors are being addressed: • The articles will be peer reviewed, making use of the University of California’s eScholarship repository features, which enables an automated double blind review process; • It is a multinational endeavour: the editors represent Belgium, the UK and the US, while the editorial committee adds representatives from Egypt, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland; • It has the stamp of approval of Zahi Hawass, the highly influential Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt who is on the advisory committee - yes, the guy with the fedora; • The International Association of Egyptologists has endorsed it; • Funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities and affiliation with the California Digital Library will ensure stability and longevity; • Last but not least: author's rights for individual articles will remain with the author for probably 5 years, a reasonable length of time within which an expedition or archaeologist ought to be able to publish the excavation data in a more formal way. http://archive.icommons.org/articles/ancient-righting-archaeologists-copyright Halperin, who authored the (in)famous New York Times article calling for perpetual copyright, has now compiled his ideas into a book. Lessig offers a much-needed critique, including citing misconceptions about Creative Commons (Halperin conflates it not only with "freeware" with software... more iCommons Supports Open Video A key change at iCommons Revisioning iCommons + all icommons blog posts Page 2 of 4 iCommons.org - Ancient Righting: Archaeologists & Copyright 6/1/10 10:08 Recurring theme However, John Lynch was only one of several speakers who touched on issues of copyright, open access and the like. Digital registration of excavation finds, as well as increasing digitisation of existing archaeological collections of all stripe, are unstoppable developments. Everyone realises this. The big impediments are: 1) money; 2) time/(wo)manpower; 3) software/IT expertise. Fortunately, funding organisations are focusing more and more on digitisation and online sharing projects, e.g., the proposed National Endowment for the Humanities (the U.S behemoth of archaeological funding) new budget before the US Congress now. Time and (wo)manpower remain a tougher problem: no matter how you approach it, digitisation is time consuming and requires skilled or at least trained people. In the field, while excavating, it might take a little extra time to register information digitally but it surely saves time later when researching, analysing and synthesising the typical avalanche of primary data. As many of the speakers illustrated though, there still is a tendency for each archaeological/conservation project to design from scratch a database system attuned to (perceived) specific research needs (e.g., Huffman of the Institute for Aegean Prehistory - Study Center for East Crete). The Getty's Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) system for cataloging using standardised terms and definitions was set up to address the problem of a lack of shared, standardized terminology. The Getty also developed the CDWA Lite (Categories for the Description of Works of Art) system which allows a minimal cataloging routine, usable for any kind of institution, bowing in a way to the realities of the real word. Their Open Archives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is an excellent protocol to embed the catalogue data and provides the common language for accessing museum and library collections as well as individual objects over the web. Asserting cultural copyright Each excavation jurisdiction may also have its own rules about who is allowed to publish in which way and in which publications. For instance, in South America and the Middle East, foreign archaeologists are often not allowed to work without a local co-director who then also has preference as far as publishing is concerned, e.g. a specific type of report has to be published first of all in an archaeological service series or periodical, in the local language, a reasonable requirement that however sometimes involves friction and delays. One could say that a source country asserts its "cultural copyright" this way. Due to local sensitivities, the Tarapacá Valley Project for one is the only foreignparticipation project in Chile. In Syria, projects may be required to store all excavated materials on site for a period of time. As far as making materials available online, Kenneth Hama (Getty Trust) pointed out that things are moving fast: if you're not available on the web somehow, you risk becoming irrelevant or at least miss out on exposure, recognition for your institution or project. Aaron Burke (UCLA) introduced the concept of expectation inflation. All in all, this well-organised symposium reflected on many aspects of problems that archaeologists and conservationists share with anyone involved with cultural heritage. tags: united states science-research local-context-global-commons archaeology cultural-heritage digitization http://archive.icommons.org/articles/ancient-righting-archaeologists-copyright Page 3 of 4 iCommons.org - Ancient Righting: Archaeologists & Copyright send printer-friendly version 6/1/10 10:08 invite to vote no comments made add a comment: you must be logged on in order to comment. please log in or register at iCommons.org and and your comments right after. Creative Commons policies | credits | complaints | report a bug Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License UK Co. Reg. No. 5398065 UK Charity Reg. 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