Digital Antiquity is pleased to announce Quartz, tDAR’s 18th major release. This release focuses on enhancing collections, email, and other smaller enhancements.
New tools for creating and managing collections:
Resources owners now have new and easier ways to manage their collections. We we have made a number of changes to ease the management and creation of collections.
First, from the resource page, you can now click the “add to collection” button and quickly add a resource to a collection from there.
Second, the collection edit page now makes it a bit easier to both see everything in a collection and add/remove items from it.
Other features:
New type of Document: We’ve added a long-requested type of document “Report.” This new document type allows contributors to identify archaeological reports in tDAR and to distinguish them from “books” or “other materials.” If you have contributed materials to tDAR in the past, this feature is now available to you. If you have a large number of reports that should be converted, please contact us.
Pretty emails from tDAR: All of the emails from tDAR are now easier to read, and cleaner.
A ton of smaller bug fixes and performance enhancements.
We had a busy year in 2017, tDAR continued to grow with significant contributions from a number of organizations. tDAR had one major software release, Prehistoric, which unified search across collections, resources, and data integrations, and simplified rights and permissions.
Content added to tDAR in 2017
Usage Statistics
While we do not maintain detailed statistics on users or use to protect user and contributor privacy, we can share some interesting aggregate data. Below are the most frequently viewed and downloaded resources.
Digital Antiquity is pleased to announce Prehistoric, tDAR’s 16th major release. This software release showcases: a unified search interface, significant improvements to features related to rights and permission, a redesign of the dashboard, as well as many smaller updates and general improvements.
Unified Search:
The simple and advanced searches in tDAR continue to search active resources, but now also search collections and data integration. This means that no matter what you’re looking for, you can now search in one place. We’ve also added a separate “limiting” section on the left to allow you to drill down to a specific type (if needed).
Rights and Permissions:
tDAR has always supported Open Access for materials, but we recognize that not all materials should be publically shared. In this release of tDAR we’ve added a number of features to assist in the management of rights and permissions.
Rights and Permissions Page:
We’ve moved the rights and permissions section from the collections and resource edit pages into their own dedicated pages. This allows for faster and easier access to these functions. It also allows us to add a few new features such as timed access and invite a user.
Timed Access:
You can now grant access to a collection of resources or to an individual resource for a limited period of time. Simply select a person, assign rights, and choose a date after which the permissions will be revoked. tDAR will email both you and the user to let them know when access has expired.
Invite a User:
Have you ever wanted to share access to a resource or a collection, but the person you wanted to share with wasn’t currently a tDAR user? In Prehistoric you can add unregistered users to the access page. You will be prompted by tDAR to customize an invitation email to the unregistered user, and when the new user registers, he or she will be granted access to the item automatically.
New Dashboard:
We’ve separated out the user dashboard into a series of pages, each dedicated to a specific task: “resources”, “collections”, “bookmarks”, “billing accounts”, “my profile”, and “export.” Each of these pages integrates features from the existing dashboard but provides easier access.
As a final note, we would be remiss without recognizing the significant contributions of Jim DeVos to this and all other releases over the previous six years. We wish him the best in his new role with the ASU Libraries. We are also glad to have Brian Castellanos join us and look forward to work with him to make tDAR better.
The Center for Digital Antiquity is seeking a creative and innovative Software Engineer to help build and maintain tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record), an international digital repository for archaeological and cultural heritage data. This is a unique opportunity to leverage and expand your skills while preserving information crucial to describing and understanding the past by developing new and unique tools for digital data management, preservation, and use.
This position works with the development team to design, implement, document, and support tDAR, Digital Antiquity’s repository. tDAR is a set of Java-based web applications built using Struts 2, Hibernate, SOLR, Spring, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, JQuery, and AngularJS. This position reports to the Director of Technology.
Digital Antiquity is proud to announce that tDAR is now a formal member node of the Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE). DataONE enables universal access to data and also facilitates researchers in fulfilling their need for data management and in providing secure and permanent access to their data. DataONE offers the scientific community a suite of tools and training materials that cover all aspects of the data life cycle from data collection, to management, analysis and publication.
DataONE, like tDAR has a deep interest in data archiving, access, and use, as well as reproducible science. Researchers using DataONE’s suite of tools will now be able to discover archaeological materials that have been contributed to tDAR as well as the approximately 1,000,000 files currently part of DataONE.
We had a busy year at the Center for Digital Antiquity in 2016, tDAR continued to grow with significant contributions from the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization , US Air Force, and US Army Corps of Engineers. tDAR had one major software releases, Obsidian which focused on enhancing the collections pages, searching, data integration, and added new APIs for working with data and metadata in tDAR.
We are continuing our work with the Corps of Engineers Veterans Curation Program, putting digital products based on their rehabilitation of physical archaeological collections into tDAR where it can be shared broadly. We worked with the US Air Force cultural heritage program as program leaders there continued to build digital archaeological archives for their bases and other facilities. We are also still working with the Phoenix Area Office of the Bureau of Reclamation on their rich archives of archaeological material.
As part of our continuing agreements with Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and Society for American Archaeology (SAA), we ran workshops highlighting best practices in digital curation at the AIA annual meetings in Orlando and San Francisco respectively. We also continue to provide SAA student members with a number of no cost uploads for contributing their data to tDAR as part of our agreement with SAA.
We continued our existing partnerships with the DataARC and SKOPE NSF awarded projects. We also developed new international partnerships for the use of tDAR by colleagues and organizations in Australia with the Federated Archaeological Information Management System (FAIMS) and in Canada with Sustainable Archaeology at the University of Western Ontario and the Museum of Ontario Archaeology.
Content added to tDAR in 2016
Usage Statistics
While we do not maintain detailed statistics on users or use to protect user and contributor privacy, we can share some interesting aggregate data. Below are the most frequently viewed and downloaded resources.
EXARC, the ICOM Affiliated Organisation representing archaeological open-air museums, experimental archaeology, ancient technology, and interpretation, migrated it’s bibliographic database into the EXARC Experimental Archaeology Data Collection in tDAR this month, with technical support from the Center for Digital Antiquity. Now, in addition to providing an extensive bibliography for those interested in experimental and experiential archaeology, primitive technology and archaeological open-air museums, EXARC will be able to make publications and supplementary data (images, fieldnotes, large datasets) available, where possible; and preserve the files for the long-term. It will also make the bibliographic citations available to a wider audience by including them with other archaeological resources.
The bibliography was originally compiled by EXARC Director, Dr Roeland Paardekooper. The new collection will be managed by Dr Jodi Reeves Eyre.
In the future, EXARC plans to extend the collection and work with with universities and museums to upload their experimental archaeology data, publications and grey literature into the collection. The long term goal is to establish a board of professionals to oversee the collection, evaluate the quality of submissions and promote the preservation of and access to the wealth of data produced. If you or your institution are interested in contributing materials, or you want to learn more about supporting the collection, please contact Reeves Eyre.
Welcome to Obsidian: The Center for Digital Antiquity’s 15th major release of tDAR. In this overview of Obsidian you will find information detailing both the major and minor improvements made to the tDAR system. The pertinent modifications of Obsidian include improvements to Collection and Keyword Pages, Maps, Data Integration, and a new export feature.
Improved Collection Pages:
We have enhanced collection pages (example) to include more summary information about the collections’ contents. This includes a map showing where the resources in the collection are located geographically (aggregated from the bounding boxes) and clusters of common keywords related to the resources in each collection. Additionally, when viewed in the “map view”, collections now dynamically load all of the items in the collection onto the map.
Coding Sheet Mapping & Dataset Changes:
Coding sheets now have an error report displaying values that may be missing from them, but are present in the datasets they’re mapped to. They also include “special” mappings for values that are unknown, or missing.
Data Table Descriptions:
One of the missing features for data tables was a user’s inability to add a description to a dataset; we have corrected this issue.
Simplifying Associating Images with Datasets
With datasets like the Mimbres collection, we’ve added a new column type “filename” that simplifies the mapping between a row in a dataset and an image file.
Searching within maps:
With tDAR’s coverage being worldwide, one challenge is allowing a user to identify a specific area on the map to either search or draw their bounding box. We’ve added a search box in the top right of most maps to allow users to specify a town, city, state, or country to navigate on the map to the approximate location.
Improved World Map
We’ve expanded the world map on the homepage to allow users to filter down to specific states within the US. Users can now see how many resources are associated with each US State as well as country. This has also been implemented in an extensible form that will allow us to implement similar maps on collection pages.
Faster searching:
We’ve removed some of the debugging associated with the initial SOLR implementation as well as improved how we display and manage information in SOLR to significantly impact the search performance (In some cases, up-to 10x faster). Of note here, we were extremely conservative in our initial implementation of SOLR, and this release, along with the next few will start to make more aggressive changes that take advantage of all of SOLR’s features as well as improvements.
Data Export:
It’s important for users to feel confident about contributing their data to tDAR. Part of fulfilling our promise of being an archive is allowing users retrieve their materials again. We’ve added the ability to export all of the files associated with a billing account or collection. Users can make a request and the system will create a ZIP file with all of the files they uploaded, any archival versions, and copies of the XML metadata records, providing a description of all records.
Linked Open Data:
We’ve added the ability to associate keywords with external vocabularies such as Open Context, Pelagios, and other authorities. Those keywords and relationships are exposed as JSON-LD and embedded in each tDAR page.
Improved API Documentation:
We’ve updated tDAR’s API documentation to include more info on what APIs are available, and how to access and/or use them. We’d love your feedback on their functionality and are more than happy to assist with any questions you have. We are always open to suggestions on what you think would assist in the continuous improvement of tDAR.
GeoJSON search endpoint:
Along with our existing search endpoints (HTML, and RSS / GeoRSS), we’ve added a GeoJSON endpoint for tDAR allowing easier display of tDAR results on ESRI, Google, and Leaflet maps.
We hope you enjoy the new features and improvements available in our Obsidian release. As always, we encourage you to be in touch with questions or feedback. If you would like to learn more about tDAR for your personal or professional research and data management needs contact us.
Once again Digital Antiquity has partnered with The Society for American Archaeology to preserve the meeting abstracts and make the presentations and data used to support them available in tDAR. As a presenter you can access your record in tDAR, edit the metadata, and upload a PDF copy of your paper, presentation, poster, or other supplementary data (up to 3 files/30MB). The project is now live in tDAR! Here’s how to get started:
Search for your abstract.
Request access (will require a free registration).
Once completed, we will send you a message with a link to edit the abstract and upload the record.
Scroll down and edit or enhance any of the metdata you would like. Click on the green "add files" button under "Attach Document Files" and follow the prompt to upload a PDF copy of your paper or poster. If you'd like to upload a dataset in addition to your paper or presentation, please contact us for a voucher. If you are adding multiple files (e.g. your paper, a copy of your presentation, and a dataset) you will probably want to create a project.
You may save your work at any point along the way, but when your edits are complete, make sure to change your resource's status from "draft" to "active".
Click save and you are done!
As always, please call or email Leigh Anne at (480) 965-1593 or laellison@digitalantiquity.org with any questions along the way!
Were you a presenter in 2015 (San Francisco) but haven't uploaded your presentation yet? Not to worry--those abstracts are also in tDAR and can be found in the search bar at the top of this page too. Help other researchers find and cite your SAA presentations by making them available today!
And SAA Student Members don't forget that you are eligible to upload 3 files to tDAR annually as part of your membership benefits! Email membership@saa.org to receive your voucher.
Learn more about tDAR and the Center for Digital Antiquity.
Wednesday April 6th, 2016
Student Welcome Reception, Hosted by SAA Board of Directors and Student Affairs Committee, Co-sponsored by the Center for Digital Antiquity
9:00-10:30 PM – Northern Hemisphere E1-E4
Thursday April 7th, 2016
Poster Session: “Methodologies for Integrating Eastern Archaic Faunal Databases Using the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR)” 8:00-10:00 AM – Atlantic Hall B
Adam Brin and Leigh Anne Ellison – “Beyond Archiving: Synthesizing Data with tDAR,” Location 9-a
Symposium: “Public Engagement and Education: Developing Heritage Stewardship” 8:00-10:00 AM – Oceanic 3
Jodi Reeves Flores and Leigh Anne Ellison – “Heritage Stewardship in the Digital Age,” 9:30AM
Poster Session: “Heritage Values in Contemporary Society,” Sponsored by the SAA Poster Submission Task Force
8:00-10:00 AM – Atlantic Hall B
Francis McManamon and Jodi Flores – “Heritage in the Digital Age: Guidelines for Preserving and Sharing Heritage with Digital Techniques,”
Saturday April 9th, 2016
Forum: “For the Record: Archaeological Archives in the 21st Century,” Sponsored by Committee for Museums, Collections, and Curation
8:00-10:00 AM – Oceanic 4
Francis McManamon, Discussant
Symposium: What Do We Mean by “Digital Curation?”
1:00-4:00 PM – Asia 4
Leigh Anne Ellison and Adam Brin – “tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record): A Domain Repository for Archaeology, 1:30PM
Colleen Strawhacker, Thomas McGovern, Emily Lethbridge, Gisli Palsson and Adam Brin – “Linking Transdisciplinary Data to Study the Long-Term Human Ecodynamics of the North Atlantic: The cyberNABO Project,” 2:00PM
Kyle Bocinsky and Adam Brin – SKOPE: Bringing Continent-scale, Local Paleoenvironmental Data to Researchers and the Public, 3:45PM
