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Open Access Projects: The Alexandria Archive Institute
[First posted in AWOL 23 February 2010. Updated 14 October 2011]
The Alexandria Archive Institute
The Alexandria Archive Institute (AAI) is a non-profit entity
supporting research and development to enhance scholarly communications
and instruction through innovative use of the Web. We do this through
Web-based publication, with a focus on primary data—information that
rarely sees dissemination.
Our work aims to allow for greater breadth and depth of
understanding—breadth resulting from open accessibility, and depth from
sharing of primary content. This breadth and depth will promote greater
transparency in the research process, innovative reuses of datasets, and
broad-scale, collaborative research.
The AAI supports a range of projects, funded primarily by government
and private foundation grants. All projects work toward our mission of
enhancing scholarship through use of the Open Web. The primary focus of
our work is Open Context, an open access Web-based publication system
for archaeology and other field sciences. In addition to this long-term
project, we are involved in other collaborative undertakings.
Visit our Projects page for information about our current and past
activities. Subscribe to our newsfeed and our blog to receive period
updates on our activities.
The Alexandria Archive Institute is a California-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
EIN: 91-2146202
Featured Projects
Open Context
Web-based research data publication
Open Context is a digital library-backed system developed by
the AAI for Web-based publication of research data. It enables
publication, access, and reuse of editorially-reviewed data and media
from archaeology and related disciplines. (more)
Heritage Bytes
The Open Context Blog
Heritage Bytes is the AAI's blog for Open Context. It
provides news on Open Context data publications, development updates,
and ideas about promoting openness, depth, and breadth in Web-based
scholarship. (more)
In fall 2011, we started collaborating with the California Digital Library
to pilot a Data Journal for archaeology. Like a conventional journal, a
Data Journal will help set, communicate, and maintain expectations
regarding the disciplinary nature and quality of published. Data Journal
editorial review processes will help improve data quality and align
data with disciplinary standards. Through integration with citation
infrastructures and services, a Data Journal will better communicate
expectations for professional recognition needed to make data sharing
part of the mainstream of scholarly communications.(more)
We
are delighted to take part in the Intellectual Property Issues in
Cultural Heritage project, an effort representing an international,
interdisciplinary collaboration among more than 50 scholars and 25
partnering organizations embarking on an unprecedented and timely
investigation of intellectual property (IP) issues in cultural heritage
that represent emergent local and global interpretations of culture,
rights, and knowledge.(more)
DIPIR
(Dissemination Information Packages for Information Reuse) is an
IMLS-funded project led by Dr. Ixchel Faniel and Dr. Elizabeth Yakel
(University of Michigan). Project partners include the Inter-university
Consortium for Political and Social Research, the University of Michigan
Museum of Zoology, and Open Context. The project aims to study data
reuse in three academic disciplines to identify how to better describe
and document shared data to facilitate informed reuse.(more)
The
AAI hosts BoneCommons on behalf of the International Council for
Archaeozoology. BoneCommons is a community hub zooarchaeology.
Zooarchaeologists can share conference presentations, papers, and
posters. They can also post less-formal content, particularly images of
specimen so that they can get help and feedback on identifications.(more)
The
Gazetteer of the Ancient Near East will demonstrate the power of simple
tools to expand the reach and impact of open data. This new, 18-month
project was funded in August 2011 by the National Endowment for the
Humanities through their Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants program. (more)
In
collaboration with Professor Nada Shabout (University of North Texas),
we developed the Modern Art Iraq Archive (MAIA), an open access, online
system for gathering and sharing information about the works of art,
many of them now lost, from the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad.
This project, which was funded by an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up
Grant in August 2009, documents and shares Iraqi artistic expressions
and experiences by providing images of the works, information about
their current whereabouts, related documentation, and tools for the
global community to contribute content to the archive.(more)
Past Projects
The
AAI hosted a session at the 2008 Society for American Archaeology
meeting titled “Web 2.0 and Beyond: New Tools for Archaeological
Communication and Collaboration.” Audio recordings of the papers
presented in the session can be accessed here. Papers presented in this
session were published in August 2011 by the Cotsen Institute of
Archaeology Press in a volume titled “Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to
Communication and Collaboration” (edited by Eric Kansa, Sarah Whitcher
Kansa, and Ethan Watrall). Electronic copies of the book are available
free of charge on eScholarship.(more)
With
a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the AAI
undertook a 2-year study (Jan. 2009 – Dec. 2010) of user experience in
the digital humanities, with specific case studies from archaeology. We
observed creators and users of digital content in the context of their
work and developed methods to enhance access to, and usability of,
primary archaeological research content. The project was a collaboration
between the AAI and the ISD Program at the School of Information at UC
Berkeley.(more)
From
2007 to 2010, the AAI hosted a series of Open Archaeology Prize
competitions aimed at raising awareness of open access solutions among
the research community by highlighting current frameworks for sharing
content in different communities. Winners of past Open Archaeology Prize
competitions include both senior and junior scholars.(more)
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