Integrating volunteers and Experts

Integrating volunteers and Experts - examples from the Portable Antiquities Scheme
Dan PettThe British Museum
dpett@britishmuseum.org

Portable Antiquities Scheme
18,300 contributors of data
660,000 objects recorded
417,000 geo-referenced find spots
All available under CC NC-BY-SA
Driving archaeological knowledge of rural areas
Funded by DCMS
Employs 56 people
Deal with public discovery of archaeology
Started in 1997
Costs £1.4mill per annum
IT budget c.£5000

Recording: one chance
Our staff generally have one chance to record
Dissemination online is swift, cheap, easy
There is no other archaeological database of this size
It is underused for research at present
The data it contains can tell a thousand stories of our shared heritage

Finds recorded per year
New database launched
2010 – imported two large datasets and one coin hoard of 53,000 objects
Foot & mouth
OAD go bust
Scheme reviewed by MLA

Most data is sourced from metal-detecting

GPS co-ordinates if possible

www.finds.org.uk
417,000 records 663,000 objects 18,300 people involved

Why is the spatial data so important?
Without provenance:
A museum cannot acquire an object
Is it looted?
Did the landowner give permission?
Context has been lost, we don’t know the significance of the location of discovery.

All objects we have recorded
1997 – 2010
Topographical features drive discovery
Landowners and regulations can prevent discovery
Biases present in data collection eg. Staff illness, lack of car etc etc

Here be mountains
Staff based here

Types of objects recorded

Chronological distribution of finds

Method of discovery of objects recorded by PAS

About us on Wikipedia

Sparse entry on Treasure Act

Wikipedia referrals – finds.org.ukMarch 24th – November 24th
Disappointingly low referral rate 0.41% from 4 domains

Wikipedia referrals – britishmuseum.orgMarch 24th – November 24th 2010
Referral rate 1.26% from 108 domains

Major contributors
User:Victuallers
User:BabelStone
User:Martinevans123
User:AgTigress (I think this is Catherine Johns of BM)
There’s more of course…..
Amazingly fast generation of stubs after we announce things
Feed data and images to wikipedians that I’ve met or know from the online social network
We let people know before the announcement about big new discoveries

Ringlemere gold cup

British Museum record

The Frome Hoard

Frome DYK stats

Frome (Somerset) Hoard

Shrewsbury Hoard

Staffordshire Moorlands trulla

Scheme record

Crosby Garrett Helmet
Troublesome case
No images of this were in the public domain with appropriate licence
Images sourced at auction and specifically noted for use by wikipedia (I tweeted this at the time….)
Discussion note:Here are some pictures of the auction: http://www.flickr.com/photos/finds/sets/72157625114008100/ under cc-by. These were specifically noted by Daniel Pett from the Portable Antiquities Scheme as being made that way to help WP: http://twitter.com/#!/portableant/status/26650916903 Witty Lama 14:11, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Crosby Garrett Helmet

Our images in wikipedia

Wikimedia commons
Mostly uploaded by Victuallers after we met at the Hoxne challenge
Around 1200 images so far

Hoard list – many of these are first reported via PAS

The Newark Torc

Thornbury Hoard

The Hallaton Hoard

Vale of York Hoard

Scheme staff

Dbpedia – Staffordshire Hoard

Licences we use
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alikecc by-nc-sa
Attribution Share Alikecc by-sa
Attributioncc by
Attribution Non-Commercialcc by-nc
If you don’t like the licence we have issued on the work, contact us, we might waive it…..

Initial impact
2000 conn/per sec to server on launch day
Never went offline
Experienced slow performance
Content caching helped get the site through the initial onslaught
Launch

Flickr daily views @ launch
* As far as I am aware, this doesn’t include API views, of which the website made use and I used elsewhere.

Referrers and search [flickr]
Always get lots of searches for our female Time Team staff
Very few people clicked through from staffordshirehoard.org.uk – were they stuck in the silo there?

Flickr stats
Processed from - http://stats.vispillo.org

BBC News front page

In the news

PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>
PREFIX : <http://dbpedia.org/resource/>
PREFIX dbpedia2: <http://dbpedia.org/property/>
PREFIX dbpedia: <http://dbpedia.org/>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX dbpedia-owl: http://dbpedia.org/ontology/
SELECT *
FROM <http://dbpedia.org/sparql/>
WHERE {
?king foaf:page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_England> .
OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia-owl:abstract ?abstract} .
OPTIONAL {?king foaf:depiction ?depiction}.
OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia-owl:thumbnail ?thumb} .
OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia2:imgw ?imgw} .
?king foaf:page ?page.
FILTER langMatches( lang(?abstract), "en")
}
LIMIT 1
Querying dbpedia for data

Ingested dbpediasparql results
All names correspond with wikipedia
Depiction
Abstract
Direct link to wikipedia
Complements our data for latest examples and maps of findspots etc

Numismatic guides
High resolution image of pristine example
Data consumed from wikipedia (via dbpedia)
Latest examples found and recorded
Lists of available denominations/mints/types etc
Instant map of findspots

Recent news
Scheme funding cut by 15% over 4 years
Now managed by the BM and not MLA
Have recorded over 200,000 objects this year
IT budget is less than £5000

The end.
Visit our website : www.finds.org.uk
Contact me: dpett@britishmuseum.orgTwitter: @portableant

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Integrating volunteers and Experts

by dejp3 on Nov 29, 2010

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Integrating volunteers and Experts — Presentation Transcript