OKAPI Wins Open Archaeology Prize

Alexandria Archive Institute Press Release, November 30, 2007:

Scholars from UC Berkeley swept the Open Archaeology Prize competition, held at the 2007 meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). One of a series of awards around “open archaeology” funded primarily by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, this particular Open Archaeology Prize targeted members of ASOR, a long-standing organization of archaeologists conducting research in the Near East. The winners, who were selected based on their project’s scholarly merit, potential for reuse in research or teaching and availability on the web in a free and reusable format, were announced last week at ASOR’s annual meeting in San Diego.

First Prize, Senior Scholar
First prize for a Senior Scholar was awarded to the team led by Ruth Tringham (Professor, Department of Anthropology) and Noah Wittman (Program Manager, Open Knowledge and the Public Interest) for their website “Remixing Çatalhöyük” (http://okapi.berkeley.edu/remixing). Remixing Çatalhöyük has been variously described as a database narrative and as a multimedia exhibition and research archive. Launched in October 2007, it features the investigations and data of the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük (BACH) and their colleagues at the Neolithic tell settlement of Çatalhöyük, Turkey. The aim of the website, accessible in English or Turkish, is to engage the public of all ages in the exploration of primary research data through four themed collections that are selected from the research database. One theme on the Life-History of People, Places, and Things - also includes a K-12 activity module. The public are invited to download media items that are licensed with a Creative Commons 3.0 license, create original projects and contribute their own “remixes” about Çatalhöyük. Tringham and Wittman write that the developers of this resource “hope that this project will inspire other researchers to openly share their research data and engage broad public audiences.” Remixing Çatalhöyük represents a groundbreaking effort toward sharing and elucidating the past, and we certainly hope other projects will follow their lead.

First Prize, Junior Scholar
First prize for a Junior Scholar was awarded to Catherine Foster (PhD student, Department of Near Eastern Studies) for her project “Household Archaeology and the Uruk Phenomenon: A Case Study from Kenan Tepe, Turkey” (http://nes.berkeley.edu/~cpfoster/). Catherine is awarded first place for developing a website on her research involving household studies of a Late Chalcolithic community in the Upper Tigris region of southeast Anatolia. Foster explains that the ultimate goal of this project is to create an open access micro-artifact database that can be used as a reference resource for other scholars wishing to embark on this type of analysis. Because it will be open access, other scholars will be able to add to the database with high-resolution scans and descriptions or alter categories as developments are made. She states, “To my knowledge, no such database is freely available over the Internet and will be a valuable resource as the inclusion of microarchaeological techniques in Near Eastern excavation projects becomes more and more commonplace.” Foster’s project demonstrates a solid foundation in open access and a visionary approach for future sharing of research in archaeology.

Runner Up
A second prize of $200 in books, co-sponsored by the David Brown Book Company, was awarded to Justin Lev-Tov (Statistical Research, Inc.) for his project “Hazor: Zooarchaeology” (http://www.opencontext.org/database/project.php?item=HazorZooPRJ0000000010). This project presents zooarchaeological identification and analysis of nearly 10,000 animal bones from Late Bronze Age and Iron Age contexts at Hazor, research Justin conducted as part of the Hazor Excavations in memory of Yigael Yadin. By sharing this dataset in Open Context with a flexible license for reuse, Justin is improving access to high-quality research and original data that accompany published syntheses. This dataset has been accessed over 11,000 times since it was uploaded to Open Context in Fall 2006. We hope to see more related content from this time period available in open access formats so that Justin’s dataset becomes even more valuable through comparison with other sites.

The ASOR Open Archaeology Prize competition is sponsored by the Alexandria Archive Institute, promoting the development and use of open educational resources in archaeology and related disciplines. The competition aims to enhance community recognition of open scholarly communication and receives generous support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David Brown Book Company and the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Remixing Çatalhöyük Launches

Remixing Çatalhöyük
http://okapi.berkeley.edu/remixing
The OKAPI team is pleased to announce the launch of Remixing Çatalhöyük, a multimedia exhibition and research archive featuring the investigations and discoveries of the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük and their colleagues. Located in central Turkey, Çatalhöyük (”cha-tal-hu-yuk”) is the site of a Neolithic farming community that flourished from 9,400 until 7,700 years ago. We invite the public to explore themed collections, create original projects, and contribute their own “remixes” of Çatalhöyük.

Remixing Çatalhöyük was constructed during the Spring 2007 semester by a team of UC Berkeley students, staff, and faculty, working in close collaboration with the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük (BACH). Remixing Çatalhöyük highlights and supports a multi-vocal approach to history, where the global, online community is invited to participate in the dialogue alongside the physical, local community. The OKAPI and BACH teams hope that this project will inspire other researchers to openly share their research data and engage broad public audiences.

Web Site Design
Remixing Çatalhöyük features a tripartite design, including a research archive, themed collections and an interactive web exhibition.

The Research Archive includes more than 65,000 photos, videos, articles and other multimedia research materials–all freely available under Creative Commons NonCommercial Attribution licensing.

The Remixing team curated and adapted research materials into four Themed Collections designed to engage public in the process of archaeology and support a wide range of “k to grey” teaching and learning scenarios:
• Life Histories of People, Places and Things
• Senses of Place
• Archaeology at Different Scales
• The Public Face of Archaeology
The themed collections feature intro articles, intro videos, K-12 activities, and 200 carefully selected and annotated multimedia resources from the research archive.

The Web Exhibition was designed to spark interest and provide context for numerous research materials. The interactive Site Plan (at right) allows users to zoom in and roll-over excavation site features. The Timeline (at right), Map and People gallery orient visitors and highlight the project’s multi-vocal, multi-scalar approach to archaeology.

K-12 Activity
In this unique activity co-developed by a team of archaeologists, teachers, and curriculum developers, students use archaeological evidence and their own imaginations to reconstruct life in a Neolithic household, more than 9,000 years ago. The activity is designed for middle school students and can easily be adapted for other ages. This activity complies with Section 6.1 of the California History-Social Science Content Standards for sixth grade students, which requires that “Students describe what is known through archaeological studies of the early physical and cultural development of humankind from the Paleolithic era to the agricultural revolution.”

On Remixing
Remixing Çatalhöyük is designed to advance the discovery of new ideas by facilitating the reuse of resources and ideas developed by the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük. The site features student projects, faculty presentations, multimedia websites, and other “remixes” of Çatalhöyük research data. We hope these examples inspire others to remix and reuse research data from this and other projects.

Archaeoblender
http://www.archaeoblender.com
Visitors are encouraged to download, remix materials, and share their remixes using Archaeoblender. Archaeoblender was developed by the OKAPI team using ccHost, an open-source application developed by the Creative Commons for sharing and remixing multimedia content.

OKAPI Island
Virtual Residents of Second Life –a multi-user online environment—can visit Okapi Island to explore 3D representations of Catalhoyuk as it exists today and as it may have looked in the past. During the Fall 2007 semester, a dozen students, faculty and staff will be completing construction of Okapi Island and preparing for a public program.

Okapi Island, location of Çatalhöyük in Second Life. Come Visit! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0

Okapi Island Project Wiki (Join Us!)
http://okapiisland.pbwiki.com/

Accessibility
We provided a text version of the site to improve accessibility for users with low speed connections, screen readers, iPhones or other special needs.

Multilingual
The entire site (with the exception of the research database) was translated into Turkish by UC Berkeley Anthropology graduate student Burcu Tung and proofed by Stanford Anthropology graduate student Elif Babul. Tesekkür.

Dissemination
To maximize visibility and reuse, we have (or will soon) republished materials from Remixing Catalhoyuk in multiple locations, including Flickr, YouTube, Apple Learning Interchange, Connexions, Internet Archive, Wikiversity, WikiEducator, and CyArk. A future report will document the quantity and nature of traffic we receive from each site.

On Building Themed Collections
The design of our themed collections was greatly influenced by the process, products and findings of the Calisphere Themed Collections project as documented in “Handful of Things” article by Mankita et al in May 2006 issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Tips, Tools, and Templates
We paid special attention to documenting our process so that others could reuse our tools and techniques. This information is available in the Tips, Tools, and Templates section of the site.

Credits
Project Sponsors:
Paul Grey, Principal Investigator, Scholar’s Box; Professor of Engineering, UC Berkeley
David Greenbaum, Project Director, Scholar’s Box; Director of Data Services, UC BerkeleyRuth Tringham, Principal Investigator, Berkeley Archaeologists at Catalhoyuk
Michael Ashley, Manager, New Programs, Office of the CIO, UC Berkeley

“Remixing” Team:
Noah Wittman, Project Director, Remixing Çatalhöyük
Ruth Tringham, Content Direction, Pilot Instructor; Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley; Principal Investigator, Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük (BACH) Project
Burcu Tung, Content Developer and Turkish Translations, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Elizabeth Ha, Media Manager, Video Production
Adrian Van Allen, Web & Interaction Designer
Ruth Tepper Brown, EditorOna Johnson, Curriculum Developer
Denise Phelps, Digital Media Specialist
Michael Ashley, Information Architect
Marc Moglen, Second Life Audio Producer
Daniel Wei, Second Life Scripting and Modeling
Elif Babul, Turkish Proofing
Joseph Coburn, Interactive Designer, Demonstration Tool
Rockman et al, Evaluators

Special thanks to the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük and colleagues for sharing their content and expertise.

This project was made possible with funding from the US Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE Grant #P116B040739). Additional support was provided by the Gilbert Fund, UC Berkeley’s Office of the CIO, Open Knowledge and the Public Interest, Multimedia Authoring Center for Teaching Anthropology, and the Archaeological Research Facility.

Beyond EText: Remediated Places Final Draft

The final draft of “Senses of Places: Remediations from text to digital performance” by Ruth Tringham, Michael Ashley and Steve Mills has been posted on the Remediated Places blog. This article has been prepared for the upcoming (December 2007) electronic version of Visual Anthropology Review

Experience from Catalhoyuk 2007: CatDV to Portfolio

In July 2007, during our season of Remediated Places project at Çatalhöyük, Steve Mills and I decided for a number of reasons to create an Extensis Portfolio catalog for the assets of the project. I had already created a catalog for the video assets using SquareBox CatDV, which is a great tool for indexing and creating videoclips and taking them straight into Final Cut Pro editing. But there are disadvantages. Steve couldn’t see or contribute to the clips because he did not own a Windows version of CatDV and moreover, we didn’t have the funds to purchase the client/server version which would be essential for our transatlantic post-season collaboration. Finally there are some disadvantages of CatDV that I mention below in regard to user fields that I find annoying, compared to the versatility of Extensis Portfiolio.

Meanwhile, Michael Ashley and the Media Vault Project are going great guns developing the use of the cross-platform client/server basis of Extensis Portfolio at UC Berkeley. Steve’s audio files had been kept in an MS Excel spreadsheet format and he was eager to have the information in a database along with the audio files themselves.

So we decided to create a catalog linked to both audio and video files of our merged assets. An alternative would have been Filemaker Pro which also enables this kind of linking. However, we chose Portfolio because of our hoped-for collaboration with the Media Vault Project since our project is embedded in the Çatalhöyük project which has been chosen as one of the MVP’s pilot projects.
We have posted the path by which we travelled technically from CatDV to Portfolio in a posting on the Remediated Places blog

Brown Bag Presentation: Building Digital Collections for Campus Scholarship and K-12 Education

TITLE: Building Digital Collections for Campus Scholarship and K-12 Education
SPEAKER: Noah Wittman
DATE: 12 pm Wednesday, July 18
LOCATION: Room 101A, 2195 Hearst St.

KEYWORDS: Digitization, Digital Asset Management, Licensing, Metadata, Creative Commons, OAI-PMH, Dublin Core, Second Life, Remixing, Çatalhöyük, Curiosity Box, OKAPI, Themed Collections, Exhibitions, Extensis Portfolio, ccHost, Scholar’s Box, FIPSE, Calisphere, Anthropology, Translation/Localization, K-12, Web 2.0, Open Source

DESCRIPTION: Noah Wittman will share progress on the US Department of Education Scholar’s Box project, describing diverse technologies, practices, and models for building digital collections. In particular, Noah will discuss recent efforts to (1) pilot digital asset management tools and services for the UC Berkeley Anthropology Department and (2) develop teaching collections and an online exhibition featuring archaeological research materials—more than 75,000 photos, videos, and articles–describing Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement located in modern-day Turkey.

Learn more about the Scholar’s Box project:
http://okapi.wordpress.com/projects/fipse-the-scholars-box/

Presentation_Slides(PDF) 2MB

Presentation Slides (PDF) 20 MB  (Better Quality Images)

Open Repositories Meeting Notes, San Antonio 2007

The 2007 Open Repositories Conference took place in San Antonio, Texas, January 23-26. This was a compelling meeting on the important topic of repositories and digital preservation. Over 350 people participated in the user groups, workshops, presentations and poster sessions.

Photograph © Ryan “Zieak” McFarland.

Attached as PDF please find my notes on some of the key talks. Open Repository Notes by Michael Ashley

From their site,

Repositories increasingly play a pivotal role in the emerging information landscape. With its theme of “Achieving Interoperability in an Open World”, OR07 will create an opportunity to explore the challenges faced by user communities and others in today’s world.

During the three-and-a-half day conference, Open Repositories 2007 will continue the very successful format of Open User Group meetings for DSpace, Fedora, and Eprints, followed by general conference sessions that cover cross-cutting and overarching issues.

The many repository platforms available today are changing the nature of scholarly communication. Institutions such as universities, research laboratories, publishers, libraries, and commercial organizations are creating innovative repository-based systems that address the entire lifecycle of information—from supporting the creation and management of digital content, to enabling use, re-use, and interconnection of information, to ultimately ensuring long-term preservation and archiving.

For more information, or to browse the list of accepted presentations, posters, and speakers, see the conference program.