The state of digital archaeological archiving policies and practice [questionnaire survey results]

The digital transition in archaeology is often taken for granted, yet the process is far from complete. The topic of digital archiving has been addressed by both the EAC Working Group for Archaeological Archives and the SEADDA project. These two entities joined forces to produce a special issue of the Internet Archaeology journal, bringing together papers on digital archiving practices in over two dozen countries (Richards et al. 2021). The papers were later analysed by EAC and SEADDA to compare the international situation. The results reveal both shared difficulties associated with the issue of documentary archives worldwide and examples of good practices that help to overcome these problems.

A questionnaire survey was also carried out to complement the findings resulting from the interpretation of the published articles with supporting data covering the whole European area in a balanced way. The survey allowed for the compilation of an overview of the situation in 27 countries (30 regions) of Europe. All respondents were experts involved in digital archiving and/or heritage data management in individual countries. Based on the collected information, the disproportion in value of archaeological data and their position within heritage management practice is already proving to be a major shortcoming. Presented dataset contains the questionnaire and the survey results, serving as complementary material to the published interpretation (Novák et al. forthcoming).

References:

Novák, D. - Oniszczuk, A. - Gumbert, B. forthcoming: Digital archaeological archiving policies and practice in Europe: the EAC call for action. Internet Archaeology 63. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.63.7

Richards, J.D., Jakobsson, U., Novák, D., Štular, B. and Wright, H. 2021: Digital Archiving in Archaeology: The State of the Art. Introduction, Internet Archaeology 58. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.58.23