Framework Archaeology (a joint venture between Wessex Archaeology and Oxford Archaeology) have just released data from the excavations at Stansted Airport from between 1999 and 2004.
The data is released under an Attribution Non-Commercial Creative Commons license. This is good news for archaeologists and other interested parties to be able to reuse and share the data, and another step forward towards opening up data about our past.
Framework Archaeology also distribute a (Windows-based) free data viewer, which provides basic GIS functionality for viewing the Stansted and Heathrow Terminal 5 data. The installation process is simple - download the Free Viewer (as it is called) and run the installer. Then download the dataset, run the dataset installer, launch the software, and explore away…
For those that just want the raw Stansted data, the formats for download include csv, xml, gml, shp, data dictionary, photos (jpg), and sections (jpg).
The excavation data for Heathrow Terminal 5 was released by Framework Archaeology in a similar way last August.
Making data from such an important archaeological excavation is a great philosophical move, and I do hope that more organisations follow suit. The key will be to see what (if anything) people do with this data…
A survey is being carried out by the Eduserv Foundation into the use of more open licensing schemes such as Creative Commons by cultural heritage organisations.
Jordan Hatcher, formerly a Research Associate at the AHRC Research Centre for studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law, is leading a study into how open content licences are currently being used by cultural organisations in the UK. The study began in June, 2007 and is being funded by the Eduserv Foundation. Ed Barker of Eduserv is assisting with the work.
In the survey, it is asked if people are interested in a ‘toolkit’ being produced next year to help people understand these ‘new’ ways of licensing cultural heritage information. This is something I would love to see, as an advocate of Creative Commons.
It’s a shared cultural heritage that we have, and come what may, it’s our duty to share the information we have about it.
[Disclaimer: I work for Wessex Archaeology]
Wessex Archaeology have just announced that they will be using a Creative Commons license for the 600+ photos that they have on Flickr and in their gallery.
Let’s hope that other heritage organisations follow suit. The “All Rights Reserved” copyright model is very restrictive when you study and record the past, and want to share some of that work with others to aid and encourage further learning.
By adopting the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0″ license, they are actively saying to people “we want you to use our photos”. Which for a heritage organisation, is fairly novel!
