A Culture Grrl post brought my attention to the Leon Levy Foundation's recent efforts to promote the publication of records from old digs. See http://leonlevyfoundation.org/category/newsroom/whats-new/ It's particularly nice to see representatives of the AIA in attendance. That makes sense. Indeed, the AIA already has a similar program. See http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10295
Hopefully, these efforts will also lead to the publication of coins from excavations. During the recent MOU hearing on Italy, it struck me that a number of speakers from the archaeological community maintained that import restrictions were necessary to promote archaeological research into coins. Yet, an academic paper the International Association of Professional Numismatists commissioned conclusively demonstrated that Italian finds from official archaeological excavations remain woefully underpublished.
Is anyone working on merely "backing up" the old records? I'm referring to photocopying them or scanning them and keeping the results off-site?
ReplyDeleteIn the computer field everyone must back up their data. Failure to back up ones data implies that the custodian of the data (the user or site administrator) doesn't value the data.
My worry is that a lot of important journals, notebooks, and stratigraphic records exist in only one copy. That copy is at risk as we saw in Cologne.