Exploring sustainable publication and the web: a case-study from ARK perspective
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2015-03-16

Michael Johnson, J. Andrew Dufton, Elizabeth Fentress
L - P : Archaeology

At CAA-UK, Bradford

Within the past decade, new platforms for creating and managing archaeological data during fieldwork have seen both widespread adoption and increasing intricacy. Although effective data management is now a necessary component of most field projects, the lives of these complex systems after the project has ended are less certain. Institutional concerns including basic software requirements, system upgrades, and web security can derail digital publication and result in largely static, albeit sustainable, archives, downloadable CSV files, simple HTML pages, and, occasionally, PDFs. These formats are only one piece of the puzzle, a necessary aspect of sustainability that, when used alone, can limit the functionality of these data for future researchers. How can we ensure the open, online publication of archaeological data while also maintaining the complexity of original field systems? What steps can we take to address institutional concerns while publishing information in interactive formats that facilitate later use and reuse? What is the future for data available in older systems as software continues to develop and new approaches become viable? This paper considers some of these questions specifically in reference to the Archaeological Recording Kit (ARK). Developed at LP : Archaeology this software is designed to manage the complex data generated during archaeological excavations. The generated interface goes beyond presentation in traditional formats, but the dynamic nature of the software poses many problems for sustainability. How should these emerging issues should shape the ongoing development of the software.