Anthropological Workshop on Digital Preservation and Access Held on May 18-20, 2009
Carol R. Ember, HRAF
On May 18-20, 2009, a workshop was held in Arlington, Virginia to evaluate and potentially decide on the basics of a strategic integrated four-field plan for digitally preservation and access (DPA) to anthropological research materials (AnthroDataDPA for short). The workshop was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. The principal investigators, Carol R. Ember, Eric Delson, Jeff Good, and Dean Snow, each represented one of the traditional subfields of anthropology. Three groups of people were invited to participate:
- individuals who are actively involved in and/or planning the creation of digital object repositories;
- individuals from institutions involved in the creation of international standards and metadata to enhance interoperability and long-term preservation; and
- representatives of organizations that represent the various fields of anthropology in the United States.
There were also observers from political science, NSF, NEH, and Wenner-Gren. Breakout groups discussed data preservation, data access, methods and standards regarding metadata, digitization methods and standards, long-term preservations methods and standards, decisions regarding depositors, privacy and ethical concerns, copyright and intellectual property, and funding/support and field-wide coordination. After presenting the results of their subgroup discussions in a plenary session, breakout chairs received further input from the whole group.
The principal investigators plan to disseminate the workshop results and proposed plan online to the broader anthropological community and ask for commentary and suggestions for revision. They also plan, via appointed representatives, to liaise with major anthropological organizations as well as additional organizations engaged in or planning DPA activities. A revised plan will be posted by the spring of 2010. Future steps, not part of the existing grant, are to seek funding to set up the computer infrastructure to coordinate activities across anthropological institutions and other distributed libraries using existing data and to begin to integrate new and existing collections of primary anthropological data into the coordinated system.