Topics for Board Member Presentations and Discussion

Fred Limp and Jeff Altschul - discuss the curation of digital data beyond databases, text and images- the archiving and discovery of other data including geospatial, remote sensing, high density LIDAR and laser scans, geophysical and lab instruments, and virtual reality models. Powerpoint is available here.

Phil Walker – describes how today’s frequent insistence on in-field recording and repatriation (not just of human emains) puts extra demands on cyberinfrastructure and introduce how we can use an information infrastructure with technology (such as 3-D scanning) to help mitigate data losses. Powepoint is available here.

Julian Richards – presents the core elements of the Archaeology Data Service effort, including a comment on how you are linking the data archives to publications. He includes a brief discussion of the success of ADS’s efforts to establish best practices relative to digital data. Powerpoint is available here.

Eric Kansa – has done some useful thinking about and development of software solutions to some the core sociological problems that a successful infrastructure must face. He outlines what he sees as the most important of these. He includes a discussion of enhanced citation or other credit accruing to digital publication. Powerpoint is available here.

Fraser Neiman – based on his experience with the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, he identifies the key elements to achieving archaeological community buy-in to an information infrastructureand the biggest challenges. Powerpoint is available here.

Worthy Martin – discusses the understanding that implementation of a cyberinfrastructure can be staged, and evaluates the vision presented in our Mellon Foundation proposal and the report of the 2004 workshop report to be reasonably positioned with respect to the state of the art in computer science.

Herbert Van de Sompel – assesses the opportunities and advantages vs. the costs and disadvantages of achieving interoperability with other science informatics and digital library efforts.

Frank McManamon – discusses the two or three most important values that an integrated text and data information infrastructure could bring the mission of the National Archaeology Program. He assesses ways in which those values can be “sold” to agencies? In light of previous governmental initiatives, he evaluates what would be required for them to adopt a solution from the outside. Powerpoint is available here.

Vin Steponaitis -provided a statement of what he sees as the most important values a cyberinfrastructure could bring to the academic research community. He discussed how the contributions to this infrastructure be rewarded in ways that “count” in an academic setting.

Brian Crane – discussed, in light of the kinds of large datasets that the Department of Defense generates and maintains, how would their integration and interoperability with major datasets not from DOD lands (by way of the proposed infrastructure) benefit the larger DOD mission. He identified aspects of an information infrastructure that could simultaneously serve the interests of DOD and its contractors.

Tom Whitley – discussed, rom the standpoint of the practice of CRM, what he sees as the two or three most important values of a cyberinfrastructure and what do he sees as the two or three largest impediments to its adoption. He evaluated how this infrastructure might improve efficiency or effectiveness of cultural resource management as it is practiced in the US and how might we convince people of these advantages.

Willeke Wendrich – discussed how large-scale, long-term, international multi-investigator research poses a particular challenges to or presenting particularly persuasive opportunities for an information infrastructure for archaeology. Powerpoint is available here.

Kitty Emery – reflects on the values of a research infrastructure we propose here to the missions of anthropology or natural history museums. Powerpoint is available here.