Geographic Information Just Wants to Be Free: Capacity-Building in the Ethical and Practical Uses of Free and Open Source GIS Software and Open Geospatial Data Standards within the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) is the largest compilation of completely free and open information about archaeological site descriptions and serves as an index to an ever-growing network of primary data and publications resulting from investigations at those archaeological sites. DINAA is an archaeological informatics project committed to the principles of unrestricted access to scientific and cultural data about the human past, as well as deliberate acceptance of the concomitant responsibilities for information security and facilitated reuse that openness entails. Many security and reuse concerns about archaeological site information, such as the data published and indexed through DINAA, fall into the realm of geographic information issues. DINAA uses and promotes open data standards for geographic data development and communication. DINAA also promotes and supports the use of free and open source software geographic information system applications for consumption and reuse of our geographic data. These choices are made with the ethical expectation that they should in the long run result in a project with greater impact on capacity building and knowledge mobilization among the community of DINAA users and contributors, by making the barriers to community involvement as low as possible.

Cite this Record

Geographic Information Just Wants to Be Free: Capacity-Building in the Ethical and Practical Uses of Free and Open Source GIS Software and Open Geospatial Data Standards within the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA). Joshua J. Wells, Robert Carl DeMuth, Stephen Yerka, Eric Kansa, Sarah Whitcher Kansa. Presented at The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Albuquerque, NM. 2019 ( tDAR id: 451394)

Spatial Coverage

min long: -168.574; min lat: 7.014 ; max long: -54.844; max lat: 74.683 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25226