CAA2004 paper submission form – THEMATIC SESSIONS

Title:

Between the book and the exhibition. Creating archaeological presentations based on database information.

Contact person:

Øyvind Eide

Affiliation:

University of Oslo, The Museum Project

E-mail:

Oyvind.eide@muspro.uio.no

Authors:

Name(s)

Affiliation(s)

Øyvind Eide

Jon Holmen

Anne Birgitte Høy-Petersen

University of Oslo, The Museum Project

University of Oslo, The Museum Project

Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Museum of Natural History and Archaeology

Paper overview (max 120 words):

The Museum Project is a co-operation project between the four universities in Norway with the aim of developing common database systems for the management of collections for all the Norwegian university museums. As part of the Museum Project's work related to the EU funded ARENA project, a demonstrator have been created where material from various databases have been put together to form a thematical website. This paper will describe the system used for performing this task. In the system, meta-data describing the digital objects to be included in the website are entered in a database, and a computer program automatically creates the website based on these meta-data.

Relevance (what needs does the paper address? Max 120 words)

The Museum Project aims at better integration between several Norwegian archaeological archives, including the Sites and Monuments Register, the catalogues of the artifact collections, the so-called topographical archives, and image collections. The paper descripes an important step in this work, making these important resources more useful for researches, students and the general public.

Goals (what is the aim of the paper? Max 120 words)

The paper will present a simple system for generation of web pages, with some notes on how this system can be expanded to a full-scale production system. The paper will describe how this system is used to make a web-site describing 230 years of archaeological work at the farms of Egge and Hegge in central Norway.

Reference (where is the paper placed within current international research? Max 120 words)

Creating web-sites based on information stored in databases is today a widely used method. The novelty of our approach lies in its application to heterogenous archaeological databases.

Improvements (how does the paper contribute to research? How will it improve the present state of the art? Max 120 words)

Although there are several exceptions to this, arcaheological publications tends to be excavation centered. Our approach centers the publication around a specific theme, such as a place. This brings together the traditions of book publications and museum exhibitions while keeping the connections to the national databases.

Results (which results have been achieved? Which can be achieved by further work, and how? Max 120 words)

This approach have made it possible to create the website for the ARENA project quicker than we could have done by hand-made HTML, and the site is easier expandable than a hand-made site would have been. In further expansion into a production system, it is necessary to make a user interface so that the process of entering the information needed to create a website is easier. This will make it possible to make high quality web systems which is both easy to update and which can automatically reflect changes in the underlying databases.

Literature (quote the most relevant 5 bibliographic recent references including work carried on outside the present authors’ team; if there are not, justify)

  1. "Historie og kulturlandskap" ["History and Cultural Landscape" - a local Egge/Hegge website]: http://www.steinkjer-kommune.net/eggevandring/egge/index.php (as of 2003-12-04)

  2. Julian D. Richards: "Digital preservation and access" in European Journal of Archaeology Vol 5 Issule 3. 2002.

  3. The National Museum of Denmark: "Guder & Grave" ["Gods & Graves"]: http://www1.natmus.dk/kulturnet/ (as of 2003-12-04). Description in English: http://www.kulturnet.dk/en/text/omknet650p.html (as of 2003-12-04)

  4. Amanda Clarke et.al.: "Nothing to Hide - Online Database Publication and the Silchester Town Life Project" in The Digital Heritage of Archaeology. Proceedings of the CAA 2002.

  5. Maria Economou: "New Media for Interpreting Archaeology in Museums: Issues and Challenges" in The Digital Heritage of Archaeology. Proceedings of the CAA 2002.

Session title (choose an already existing one):

Internet and the archaeological communication


Instructions for filling the paper submission form


  1. Save the form in your computer with a name as the following: [first-author-name]-caa2004

For instance if the first author is John Smith save the file as smith-caa2004


  1. Save the file as .rtf or .doc, that is the public format RTF or the Microsoft Word format. Please do not use other file formats.


  1. Fill ALL the fields of the form and edit until you are satisfied. Do not alter the format and respect the limitations.


  1. The “ contact person” for the paper is possibly a different person from the one who will lecture at the conference or the first name appearing on the printed paper, Put a reliable contact person, because he/she is responsible for spreading information concerning the paper to others.


  1. Put ALL authors’ names in their box, one line each, and their affiliations in the corresponding line of the “Affiliation” field in the order they will appear on the scientific program. If necessary abbreviate. If the contact person is an author repeat his/her name here in the appropriate order.


  1. Fill the information concerning the paper. To save space, if possible avoid breaking the text in paragraphs and/or using bullet lists. The text must be less than 120 words AND fit in the box.


  1. If possible avoid to refer ONLY to your previous publications. If it impossible, or no reference is available, justify.


  1. Check updated documentation concerning sessions on the web site and choose carefully the most appropriate to your paper. A wrong selection may mean rejection of a paper simply because it is off-topic, and revision of such rejected papers is NOT guaranteed.
    If you really think that no session is appropriate for your paper, fill the field “Session title” with NOT AVAILABLE. In this case it will be assigned by the organizing committee but no responsibility can be assumed for wrong assignment and consequent rejection.


  1. Carefully check your form. Once you are satisfied with it, send it as an attachment to the following address: submission@caa2004.org with no text in the message (it will not be read, anyway) and the subject “paper submission”. Submission is final, so please avoid re-submitting just because you noticed some mistake or whatever: papers are sent directly to reviewers and new submissions would be trashed. Please use this mailbox for submissions only.
    You will receive notification of receipt in one working day or two. If not, send an email to     info@caa2004.org with subject “Paper Inquiry” specifying in the text paper title, first author and date of submission.


  1. DO NOT FORGET TO REGISTER. You can do that after your paper has been accepted, but not later than 10 January 2004. To be considered for insertion into the conference program, papers must be accepted AND at least one of the authors must register before 10 January 2004.