Arachne (image database)
| Arachne | |
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| Arachne | |
| description | Free image database for archaeological objects |
| Registration | optional |
| owner | German Archaeological Institute and Digital Archeology Department at the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne |
| Originator | Reinhard Förtsch |
| Published | January 1995 |
Arachne is the central object database of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and the work center for digital archeology at the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne (CoDArchLab; formerly Research Archive for Ancient Plastic ), administered by Reinhard Förtsch .
description
Arachne is intended as a free internet research tool for archeology (s) and classical antiquity to help develop objects and conditions and to make them quickly findable from hundreds of thousands of data sets. On the one hand, this applies to the area of long-standing analogue documentation stocks, some of which are threatened with decay and largely undeveloped: active digital indexing is carried out here. On the other hand, however, it also applies to the area of the increasingly excessive new production of digital object and image data: Here, a structuring that proceeds at the lowest possible threshold applies, which uses strategies of the semantic web on the level of machine-readable metadata. All digitized, pictorial and textual object information is stored long-term on a multi-redundant Tivoli storage system.
Organization and concept
Since 2004 Arachne has been operated by a consortium that includes the DAI and the Digital Archeology Department of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne. The goal is the content and technical development. So Arachne is not a closed web database, but work in progress !
The database design of Arachne is based on two of the most elementary conditions in archeology or art history from: all objects in the "real world" are to be comparable on a very general level and are in a context before. Arachne tries to avoid one of the fundamental mistakes of earlier databases, which modeled their objects purely in a project-oriented manner and thus created separate departments with only a small number of objects that were not comparable with each other, but rather lead a separate existence. All objects in Arachne, on the other hand, have a common basis of attributes in the object model , which are extended by class-specific attributes, for example for topography or architecture . In this way, the general attributes can be used for queries about a large number of objects, while special queries also only find objects of the relevant category that have these attributes and display them in a completely contextualized manner.
Arachne tries to create interoperability between different systems and at the same time to protect the copyrights of the producers - one of the central points in the cooperation with the DAI. Also within the DAI, interoperability is becoming more and more important, especially between Arachne as the central image database and the various GIS used in excavations and surveys , in order to keep the non-security-relevant redundancy as low as possible. Another project on the part of the DAI is to provide URIs (Universal Resource Identifier) for all digitally recorded objects. The integration of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is also of great importance, and as a partner in the CLAROSnet project, a multilingual interface - which was previously missing - is created. The policy of the "Arbeitsstelle für Digitale Aräologie" (CoDArchLab) and the DAI are aimed at international cooperation in order not to tackle these complex problems alone.
Arachne currently has over 8500 registered users who have access to over a million scans and over 300,000 objects (as of week 14, 2013). Use is free of charge. The quality is naturally different, depending on the origin of the image and the status of the documentation. Predictions about the achievable digitization shares in relation to the real database are naturally difficult. An approximation can possibly be gained in the area of digitization projects of cultural heritage in Europe, where, given the current financial situation, it is assumed that about 30% of the real inventory can be digitized. For Arachne that would mean around 700,000 images; assuming newly generated documentation material, around one million images in 20 to 30 years would be realistic. All these images would then be completely retrievable, at least in terms of material and topographical situation, and the focus would then no longer be solely on classical antiquity , but also include other areas such as South America .
Development history
Arachne was developed in 1995 as a FileMaker solution and has benefited since 2001 from the establishment of a chair for historical and cultural information processing at the University of Cologne , whose students use Arachne as a test environment for serious, realistic programming projects.
Thanks to the significant and continuous support from the German Research Foundation , Arachne has also been integrating negative archives since 2001, which have significantly expanded the Cologne holdings. The archives of the photographers Barbara Malter and Gisela Fittschen-Badura have been digitized and documented, and since 2003 also the sculpture negatives of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome. As a result, the database grew by 40,000 high-quality digital recordings of ancient sculptures, which were scientifically documented accordingly.
In 2004 Arachne was fundamentally restructured, both in terms of technology and semantic and editorial. The data from the FileMaker solution was exported and the new Arachne set up as a MAMP solution. If you consider Arachne's strategic positioning as the central object database of an institution that houses around two million images in its archives and constantly produces new factual and image data, the future work and development effort can also be measured in order to at least partially and step-by-step this information capture.
literature
- Reinhard Förtsch , M. Keuler: Cologne Digital Archeology Laboratory - Office for Digital Archeology: In: Kölner und Bonner Archaeologica 1, 2011, pp. 174–175.
- P. Scheding, R. Krempel, M. Remmy: "Talking about the computer is not difficult ...". Projects and perspectives of the office for digital archeology . In: Kölner and Bonner Archaeologica 3, 2013, pp. 265–270.
- P. Scheding, M. Remmy (Hrsg.): Antique plastic 5.0: // - 50 years research archive for antique plastic in Cologne . Münster 2014.