The working life of Museum of London

In my previous blog article – Archaeology and the Digital World, I mentioned that archaeology often generates a wealth of digital records in addition to the traditional paper records you would expect to find in an archaeological archive such as context sheets, site notes and plans and sections.

More archaeologists than ever are using digital technologies to record on site. The most obvious example of this is the use of digital cameras, particularly during standing building recording investigations. As a result, we are finding that archives often now contain a significant proportion of ‘born-digital’ records, for which there is no paper equivalent. 

Despite significant advances in the field of digital preservation over the past 10 years, we still request that depositors provide selected key records in both digital and paper format. Our revised Standards for Deposition provide further detail about these requirements. We recognise however that this may need to change, even as soon as the next 12-18 months. 

One issue we are currently exploring here at the LAARC is whether or not to permit archaeological site plans to be provided in digital format only. Depositors are currently required to provide a hard copy plot of any site plans in addition to the digital version(s), which are generally produced in AutoCAD or ArcGIS software programmes. However, with the development of free software readers for AutoCAD DWG/ DXF files and ArcGIS shape files, and the ability to produce static versions of site plans in PDF or TIF format for researchers who simply want to see where a site is located (as opposed to undertaking more detailed site location analyses), is this really necessary?

We would be very interested to know your thoughts on this issue, and would welcome any comments. Do you think it is time to embrace digital only, or is it still too soon to forgo hard copy site plans altogether? What would you prefer to use if undertaking archaeological research at the LAARC?