Electronic archives.

Electronic archives. An archive is a collection of materials intended to be kept safe forthe long term. Those materials are gathered by some responsible agency,but they were created originally by others. They were made in the formsand with the methods chosen by their creators. That is, an archivecontains materials that have been created by others, that have beenformed and informed by the judgements of others and that are intenselyidiosyncratic id��i��o��syn��cra��sy?n. pl. id��i��o��syn��cra��sies1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.3. . An archive is not simply a collection of facts or ideasor objects; it is a collection of other peoples' individual orcollected facts and ideas and objects. As a result, the contents of anarchive are disparate in the extreme, from books to diaries to maps tophotographs. A digital archive is at least as chaotic as any other,probably more so. Its contents may include text files, data-base files,images, CAD files, GIS (1) (Geographic Information System) An information system that deals with spatial information. Often called "mapping software," it links attributes and characteristics of an area to its geographic location. files and more.An archive, digital or otherwise, for a discipline such asarchaeology may contain wildly diverse materials, but it is much morethan a collection of things, paper records or computer files. It is anecessary part of the collective memory of the discipline, the more sobecause the methods of the discipline leave us with records as our onlyknowledge of destroyed physical realities. Archival storage of recordsfrom a project is as crucial as proper storage of the finds for anyonewho wants to examine the materials anew a��new?adv.1. Once more; again.2. In a new and different way, form, or manner.[Middle English : a, of (from Old English of; see of) + new . Of course, the point ofarchival storage is not simply to maintain the finds and the records butto make them accessible to scholars in the future.The importance of access to archival records was brought home to merecently when a colleague, re-working material from an excavation of hisown that had been completed more than 30 years previously, needed toretrieve information from the original records. From Turkey hetelephoned the institution which had sponsored the original work - andwith which he was no longer affiliated - and was able to get the neededinformation. That was possible only because the sponsoring institutionhad taken proper care of the original records. Note that responsibilitywas taken by the institution in this instance, not by the archaeologisthimself.A digital archaeological archive will serve the same purposes ofpreserving material for later access, but the nature of the materials -electronic files of many types - will present a host of problems notencountered in a standard archive and will require more activecollaboration of the original scholars. The form and format of the fileswill be the form and format chosen by the scholars who created them, notarchivists; the variety thus encountered will reflect not onlyindividual idiosyncrasies but differing technical standards arising fromthe use of different computer hardware and software, even differentversions of the same software. Thus, while many of the concerns of anarchaeological digital archive are related to the basic duties ofstoring and caring for digital data, the diversity and individuality ofthe files in such an archive create unique problems.The first responsibility of an archive is to preserve its contentswhile providing access thereto. For the Archaeological Data ArchiveProject this means, among other things, that all files are copied ontothree CD-ROM discs, one for the original creator, one for the ADAP ADAP AIDS Drug Assistance ProgramADAP Alcohol and Drug Awareness ProgramADAP Agricultural Development in the American PacificADAP Autodiscovery/AutopurgeADAP Airport Development Aid ProgramADAP Advanced Digital Antenna Production office, and one that is taken to a bank vault for safe, secure storage.Long-term storage is much more complicated than that, however, becauseeven well-preserved files will become obsolete over time. Hardware andsoftware change, media and file formats also change; as a result, thefiles, even perfectly preserved ones, become unusable. If the existingfiles are not changed in tandem Adv. 1. in tandem - one behind the other; "ride tandem on a bicycle built for two"; "riding horses down the path in tandem"tandem with the changes in hardware andsoftware (the process called data migration), the information in thosefiles will no longer be accessible. Thus, in the case of a digital dataarchive, the contents of the archive must be considered the informationcontent of the computer files, not the physical files themselves. Thatis, preserving the files serves no purpose, and the job is to preservethe information in the files so that it can be accessed in the future asit can today. Ironically, that means, in turn, that the computer filesat the core of the archive at any given moment will all be replaced bynew and different files as advancing technology requires. Otherwise, thearchive might contain pristine versions of the original data files, butthose files would nonetheless be inaccessible. Thus, the principal workof a digital archive is the preservation of data by migration of thefiles over time, replacing files with new ones in a careful,evolutionary, controlled manner.(1)This data migration is not very demanding technically. There are someformats that are difficult, to be sure, but most common data formats canbe migrated to new ones with few problems. The problems that do crop upare more likely to arise from the complexity of the archaeological datathan the complexity of the computer files. Intimate understanding of thearchaeological information may be necessary to complete a migrationprocess accurately and completely. At the least, an understanding ofexcavation methods would be required to migrate files from anexcavation, an understanding of the particular object type for acatalogue. The breadth of holdings in an archaeological data archive -CAD files and data-base files, for instance - requires commensurate com��men��su��rate?adj.1. Of the same size, extent, or duration as another.2. Corresponding in size or degree; proportionate: a salary commensurate with my performance.3. breadth of knowledge among personnel. Migrating a CAD file is acompletely different task from migrating a data-base file. For thisreason, it will be essential for archival organizations to cooperate andshare expertise. Each archival organization should not need to beprepared to manage every potential migration path on its own.Cooperation of this sort between the Archaeological Data Archive Project(ADAP, operated by the Center for the Study of Architecture at Bryn MawrCollege Bryn Mawr College,at Bryn Mawr, Pa; undergraduate for women, graduate coeducational; opened 1885 by the Society of Friends, with a bequest from Joseph W. Taylor of Burlington, N.J. Modeled on a group curriculum plan at Johns Hopkins Univ. ) and the Archaeology Data Service (ADS, operated by a consortiumheadquartered at the University of York This article is about the British university. For the Canadian university, see York University. The University of York is a campus university in York, England. : see Richards, below p. 1058)has already begun.Implicit in Adj. 1. implicit in - in the nature of something though not readily apparent; "shortcomings inherent in our approach"; "an underlying meaning"underlying, inherent the previous paragraph was an assumption that there willbe many physical archives. The number is already growing, and it isreasonable to expect there to be many. The Internet will make itpossible to connect them and to make them appear as one to users; so onevirtual archive will consist of many physical archives.Preserving data from computer files is only one part of the corearchival job. The data must also be accessible. There must be indicesthat will permit users to determine what is available and then to findthe relevant information. The search for appropriate data categories forindexing is in process, but there are many important outstanding issues.One, for instance, involves peer review. As archives become more andmore widely distributed Adj. 1. widely distributed - growing or occurring in many parts of the world; "a cosmopolitan herb"; "cosmopolitan in distribution"cosmopolitanbionomics, environmental science, ecology - the branch of biology concerned with the relations between organisms , how will peer review be treated by the variousarchives? If there is no uniformity, then peer review will be animportant item for indexes. If peer review is required by all archives,then the need to stipulate stip��u��late?1?v. stip��u��lat��ed, stip��u��lat��ing, stip��u��latesv.tr.1. a. To lay down as a condition of an agreement; require by contract.b. peer review at the index level disappears.Such considerations are complicated by the distributed nature of adigital archaeological archive.At present, access to the material in the Archaeological Data Archiveis generally provided by FTP FTPin full file transfer protocolInternet protocol that allows a computer to send files to or receive files from another computer. Like many Internet resources, FTP works by means of a client-server architecture; the user runs client software to connect to downloading of the files. (A few datatables may be used on the web as simple tables.) This requires somesophistication so��phis��ti��cate?v. so��phis��ti��cat��ed, so��phis��ti��cat��ing, so��phis��ti��catesv.tr.1. To cause to become less natural, especially to make less naive and more worldly.2. on the part of the potential user; downloading is notdifficult, but using the files requires that the user have appropriatesoftware for opening the files and manipulating the data. Developingaccess systems that would permit users to interrogate (1) To search, sum or count records in a file. See query.(2) To test the condition or status of a terminal or computer system. large portions ofthe archive with a single query might simplify access, but that is notplanned. Although it would seem appropriate to work on such accesssystems, that would require a great deal of time, effort and expense.Until the technology has advanced further, this seems to be aninappropriate expenditure of resources.Using the archival files correctly requires more than the files inquestion and the appropriate software. Considerable information aboutthe files will also be required to make good use of them. Terminologymay be problematic in some cases, data categories are rarely as obviousas their creator thinks, datum The singular form of data; for example, one datum. It is rarely used, and data, its plural form, is commonly used for both singular and plural. points must be specified, and so on. Thenumber of potential pitfalls is considerable; so the documentationrequired is crucial. This is a burden for the data contributor, but suchdocumentation should be prepared for internal use anyway.Thorough documentation is also required if data files are to bemigrated accurately and completely. (In practice, researchers may wellhave stored their data in formats not accessible to other scholars; sothey may need to change their data to different formats before puttingthem into the archive. In addition, archival personnel will usually wantto keep data in multiple common formats. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , data migrationwill often be required at the very outset of the archival process.)Documentation and other preparatory work make adding digital data toan archive an active process. Those who created the files must beactively involved in preparing them for deposition in an archive. Thisis an added responsibility for scholars, since sponsoring institutionshave generally accepted the ultimate responsibility for archivingproject records until now. Given the added responsibilities involvedwith archiving archaeological data, Archaeological Data Archive Projectpersonnel must help with data files coming into the archive, assistingwith data migration, writing of documentation, and so on. To make theprocess of contributing data easier in the future, Archaeological DataArchive Project personnel are also available to guide researchers intheir use of computing technology, suggesting programs, file formats,approaches to collection and storage problems, and so on. Whetherconcerned with existing data or new projects, however, we must have theactive participation of the researchers whose data are involved. Digitalarchiving cannot happen otherwise.Archaeological archives are, to say the least, still in theirformative stages. The quantity of data contained is still miniscule min��is��cule?adj.Variant of minuscule.Adj. 1. miniscule - very small; "a minuscule kitchen"; "a minuscule amount of rain fell"minuscule .Although the problems of data migration are well understood and do notrepresent significant intellectual burdens, practical experience is verylimited. Indexing schemes to provide information for potential users arestill under development. There is much work still to be done, but theprocess has begun. ADAP and ADS personnel are moving forward with otherorganizations, gathering data, dealing with the remaining problems. Thefuture is bright, indeed; there is much to anticipate.1 Had my colleague stored his records on acid-bearing paper, asimilar problem might have occurred. The records would have requiredcopying to acid-free paper for long-term preservation. Whereas paperrecords might require a single such conversion, computer files willrequire conversion again and again as technology advances.