10 Years, 3 Supervisors, 7 Assistants and 30 Students. How the Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist Managed, Manages and Plans for the Future of Archaeological Data

Summary

Sustainable accessible data storage is as important to archaeologists as tractors are to farmers. In 2001 the Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist, (OSA), was archiving 20GB of data on a 100GB server. Sixteen years later the office is serving 32TB on several server systems and plans are in place to archive 60TB over the next 4 years. In addition to space needs the office must also make this data in its many forms accessible to outside entities.

In the not so distant past archaeologists secured and stored paper, photos and film in Hollinger boxes stacked to the ceilings in many places. These days many archaeological agencies have scanned and archived massive amounts of data to server systems which takes up less space and can contain many times more data. The OSA has taken advantage of many grants to scan and archive over 400,000 sheets of paper and 58,853 photos and slides. The advantage of this undertaking; accessibility and scalability.

Moving into the future the OSA must develop and plan for the security storage and accessibility in ways that protect sensitive data. Security is paramount in any organization but especially so when culturally sensitive data is in place.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22734