[HN Gopher] Digital public archaeology: Excavating data from dig...
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Digital public archaeology: Excavating data from digs done decades
ago
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 51 points
Date : 2024-07-01 17:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| dsign wrote:
| Yes. And often there are digital sources which are difficult to
| use and blocked by copyright. For example, the Chicago Assyrian
| Dictionary is publicly available as scanned PDFs which are not
| searchable :/ . I suppose that with the current state of computer
| vision and text interpretation, it's just a matter of some labor
| needed to set up some pipelines. But if a citizen assyriologist
| were to do the work and make the results publicly available, the
| copyright owners would very likely sue.
| willismonroe wrote:
| The CAD PDFs are searchable; parsing the PDFs, on the other
| hand, is more of an issue with custom fonts etc...
| krisoft wrote:
| > But if a citizen assyriologist were to do the work and make
| the results publicly available, the copyright owners would very
| likely sue.
|
| Have you actually reached out to them or are you speculating? I
| found the Editor-in-Charge's email address very easily. If you
| write a letter to them and politely explain what you are
| thinking about doing they might even provide suggestions and/or
| help.
|
| These are people who put the full dictionary on their website
| as PDFs for free. They have an "Integrated Database Project"
| they are working on. I don't know for sure but it sounds like
| they want the info to be as accessible as possible.
| dsign wrote:
| No, I didn't because this is a project that I can't pursue.
| But the usual situation in academia (and, I guess, anything
| that is not self-published) is that the copyright owners of
| publications are not even the scientific institutions that
| produce those materials, much less the researchers
| themselves.
|
| People who are interested on the subject and who may want to
| pursue a project like this one are likely to be academics or
| ex-academics, and they know beforehand that it's not just the
| technical work they need to put on, but also everything
| connected to matters of intellectual property involving
| multiple parties. That knowledge is enough to discourage
| most.
| krisoft wrote:
| > I didn't because this is a project that I can't pursue.
|
| Okay. No worries. I don't have time for it either. :)
|
| > That knowledge is enough to discourage most.
|
| I see that you are discouraged. I say this in the kindest
| way possible: have you considered that maybe the barriers
| you perceive are only there in your own mind?
|
| > the copyright owners of publications are not even the
| scientific institutions that produce those materials
|
| "COPYRIGHT UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT UNION, 1959
| ALL RIGHTS RESERVED by THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE, CHICAGO,
| ILLINOIS" is what the dictionary itself says.
|
| These are the people behind the "The Electronic
| Publications Initiative of the Institute for the Study of
| Ancient Cultures"[1]. (as I learned by clicking the "terms
| of use" button next to the download links of the
| dictionary.) Based on that it seems they wouldn't want you
| to host the files on your own site, and they don't want you
| to sell copies of their books, or profit from it in other
| ways but you could very likely just make the search system
| which refers people to the right page of their dictionary
| without copying their actual entries. That seems to be fair
| play both legally and on an emotional level. If you want a
| more integrated search experience that is where reaching
| out to them and hosting it on their own site could work.
|
| I know nothing about assyriology and copyright things can
| indeed suck, but these people in particular seem to be good
| eggs. It is possible that secretly they are copyright
| Scrooge McDuck about their dictionary but if so they are
| going very weirdly about it.
|
| 1: https://isac.uchicago.edu/research/electronic-
| publications-i...
| eszed wrote:
| As sibling poster pointed out, the researchers themselves
| likely would prefer that their work be available to all, and
| that it is not will be by decree of someone other than
| themselves.
|
| In that vein, I have never once failed (across at least
| several dozen attempts) to obtain a _gratis_ copy of a paper
| by writing an author directly, even if I don 't have access
| to the journal which published it. More often than not the
| researcher has been _thrilled_ to have been contacted by a
| random person with interest in their work; I 've had some
| interesting personal interactions and several times had
| follow-up questions answered. I highly recommend doing this.
|
| Edit: you probably know this. I'm posting my experience for
| the benefit of others who may come across these comments.
| Most people in academia are nerds at heart, and very nice to
| anyone who shares their interests.
| bluGill wrote:
| This is only because very few people actually do so. If
| even all of HN readers did this regularly some researchers
| on popular subjects would get annoyed at all the requests.
| krisoft wrote:
| > If even all of HN readers did this regularly some
| researchers on popular subjects would get annoyed at all
| the requests.
|
| True. That is the reason why I haven't shared the email I
| found for example.
|
| I think that is why being polite, and civil is such a key
| thing in this. Also understanding that the researcher who
| you reached out to might not have the bandwidth to answer
| you. (They have term papers to grade, and classes to
| prepare for, and articles to write/review and who knows
| what else.) One can send an even more polite follow up
| email a few weeks later. And maybe a third one a year
| later kind of a "here is where I got with the project"
| kind. But keeping it polite, civilised, and low volume is
| the right way to go about it. And definitely not
| demanding anything or having an expectation of them even
| answering.
|
| It is kind of a special case of the golden rule. Write
| the letter you yourself would be happy receiving.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Great videos on similar stuff by CuriousMarc
|
| Fossil Data Part 2: 8-Inch IBM Floppy Data Recovery
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FVwheTVWko
|
| Fossil Data Part 1: Paleontologic Data Fossilized on IBM 8"
| Floppies
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPOYHQTMnf8
| lovasoa wrote:
| It's encouraging to see how digital tools are helping address the
| "legacy data backlog". This aligns well with the collaborative
| open-science approach.
|
| For those interested, I recently translated an article by french
| archeologists on the same topic:
| https://sql.ophir.dev/blog.sql?post=How%20archaeology%20is%2...
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