integrating volunteers and experts
DESCRIPTION
This presentation was given at the GLAM wiki conference held at the British Museum on the 27 - 28th November 2010. Some slides have been removed due to the image rights belonging to the finder of the Crosby Garrett Helemt.TRANSCRIPT
Integrating volunteers and Experts - examples from the Portable
Antiquities Scheme
Dan PettThe British Museum
Portable Antiquities Scheme
• 18,300 contributors of data
• 660,000 objects recorded• 417,000 geo-referenced
find spots• All available under CC
NC-BY-SA• Driving archaeological
knowledge of rural areas• Funded by DCMS
• Employs 56 people• Deal with public
discovery of archaeology
• Started in 1997• Costs £1.4mill per
annum• IT budget c.£5000
Recording: one chance
Our staff generally have one chance to record Dissemination online is swift, cheap, easy There is no other archaeological database of this size It is underused for research at present The data it contains can tell a thousand stories of our shared heritage
Finds recorded per yearYear Finds1998 45881999 82002000 181062001 163682002 119962003 254642004 389972005 521882006 583062007 790102008 564482009 665152010 214840
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 20100
50000
100000
150000
200000
250000
Foot & mouth
Scheme reviewed by MLA
OAD go bust
New database launched
2010 – imported two large datasets and one coin hoard of 53,000 objects
Most data is sourced from metal-detecting
GPS co-ordinates if possible
www.finds.org.uk
417,000 records 663,000 objects 18,300 people involved
Why is the spatial data so important?
Without provenance: A museum cannot acquire an object Is it looted? Did the landowner give permission? Context has been lost, we don’t know the significance of the location of discovery.
All objects we have recorded
• 1997 – 2010• Topographical features drive
discovery• Landowners and regulations
can prevent discovery• Biases present in data
collection eg. Staff illness, lack of car etc etc
Staff based here
Here be mountains
Types of objects recorded
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
Metal objects Coins Lithics Pottery Other
Chronological distribution of finds
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000
20000
Stone
Age
Bronze
Age
Iron
Age
Roman
Early m
edieva
l
Medie
val
Post-m
ediev
al
Method of discovery of objects recorded by PAS
Metal detecting
Metal detecting, eyes only
Chance
Fieldwalking
Controlled arch.investigation
About us on Wikipedia
Sparse entry on Treasure Act
Wikipedia referrals – finds.org.ukMarch 24th – November 24th
Source Visits PPVMean visit
length Visits
en.wikipedia.org 933 4.148982 4 minutes 933
en.m.wikipedia.org 14 1.571429 30 seconds 14
fr.wikipedia.org 12 4.666667 3 minutes 12
it.wikipedia.org 1 4 3 minutes 1
Disappointingly low referral rate 0.41% from 4 domains
Wikipedia referrals – britishmuseum.orgMarch 24th – November 24th 2010
Referral rate 1.26% from 108 domains
Source Visits Pages/Visit Avg. Time on Site Visits
en.wikipedia.org 50377 6.266074 3 minutes 12 50377
ja.wikipedia.org 7911 4.82834 2 minutes 20 7911
es.wikipedia.org 4239 6.501533 3 minutes 17 4239
de.wikipedia.org 3979 6.16185 2 minutes 43 3979
ru.wikipedia.org 3790 8.004485 4 minutes 3790
fr.wikipedia.org 3166 6.502843 2 minutes 54 3166
it.wikipedia.org 1337 9.849663 4 minutes 49 1337
fa.wikipedia.org 1133 3.076787 2 minutes 33 1133
zh.wikipedia.org 994 5.385312 4 minutes 994
pt.wikipedia.org 969 6.215686 3 minutes 47 969
Major contributors
• User:Victuallers• User:BabelStone• User:Martinevans123• User:AgTigress (I think this is Catherine Johns of BM)• There’s more of course…..
• Amazingly fast generation of stubs after we announce things• Feed data and images to wikipedians that I’ve met or know
from the online social network• We let people know before the announcement about big new
discoveries
Ringlemere gold cup
British Museum record
The Frome Hoard
Frome DYK stats
Frome (Somerset) Hoard
Shrewsbury Hoard
Staffordshire Moorlands trulla
Scheme record
Crosby Garrett Helmet
• Troublesome case• No images of this were in the public domain with appropriate licence• Images sourced at auction and specifically noted for use by wikipedia (I tweeted this at the time….) •Discussion note:Here are some pictures of the auction: http://www.flickr.com/photos/finds/sets/72157625114008100/ under cc-by. These were specifically noted by Daniel Pett from the Portable Antiquities Scheme as being made that way to help WP: http://twitter.com/#!/portableant/status/26650916903 Witty Lama 14:11, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
Crosby Garrett Helmet
Our images in wikipedia
Wikimedia commons
• Mostly uploaded by Victuallers after we met at the Hoxne challenge• Around 1200 images so far
Hoard list – many of these are first reported via PAS
The Newark Torc
Thornbury Hoard
The Hallaton Hoard
Vale of York Hoard
Scheme staff
Dbpedia – Staffordshire Hoard
Licences we use
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alikecc by-nc-sa
Attribution Share Alikecc by-sa
Attributioncc by
Attribution Non-Commercialcc by-nc
If you don’t like the licence we have issued on the work, contact us, we might waive it…..
Initial impact
• 2000 conn/per sec to server on launch day
• Never went offline• Experienced slow
performance• Content caching helped
get the site through the initial onslaught
Day Pages
24/09 1,306,545
25/09 1,772,572
26/09 553,285
27/09 351,070
28/09 267,385
29/09 164,039
[..] Present ~ 25,000
Launch
Flickr daily views @ launchDay Flickr views
24/09 281,970
25/09 161,630
26/09 59,200
27/09 47,900
28/09 32,770
29/09 22,030
* As far as I am aware, this doesn’t include API views, of which the website made use and I used elsewhere.
Referrers and search [flickr]
Very few people clicked through from staffordshirehoard.org.uk – were they stuck in the silo there?
Always get lots of searches for our female Time Team staff
Flickr stats
Processed from - http://stats.vispillo.org
BBC News front page
In the news
PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>PREFIX dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>PREFIX : <http://dbpedia.org/resource/>PREFIX dbpedia2: <http://dbpedia.org/property/>PREFIX dbpedia: <http://dbpedia.org/>PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>PREFIX dbpedia-owl: http://dbpedia.org/ontology/SELECT *FROM <http://dbpedia.org/sparql/>WHERE {?king foaf:page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_England> .OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia-owl:abstract ?abstract} .OPTIONAL {?king foaf:depiction ?depiction}.OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia-owl:thumbnail ?thumb} .OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia2:imgw ?imgw} .?king foaf:page ?page.FILTER langMatches( lang(?abstract), "en") }LIMIT 1
Querying dbpedia for data
Ingested dbpedia sparql results
All names correspond with wikipedia
Depiction
Abstract
Direct link to wikipedia
Complements our data for latest examples and maps of findspots etc
Numismatic guides
Data consumed from wikipedia (via dbpedia)
Latest examples found and recorded
High resolution image of pristine example
Instant map of findspots
Lists of available denominations/mints/types etc
Recent news
• Scheme funding cut by 15% over 4 years
• Now managed by the BM and not MLA
• Have recorded over 200,000 objects this year
• IT budget is less than £5000