From Preservation to Action: How the ADS is Bridging the Data Reuse Gap

From Preservation to Action: How the ADS is Bridging the Data Reuse Gap Dr Nicky Garland, Training and Communications Manager, ADS Session 14: Data Activism Tuesday 16th December 2025 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17939678 ■Open Access data: ●1.4m records for UK heritage ●> 90,000 fieldwork reports ●> 5000 project digital archives ■More than 350 unique formats (and growing) ■Archaeology - diverse data types including 3d, stratigraphic data CAD, Geophysics, GIS, Laser Scanning, ■Heritage Science - paint samples, human osteology, zooarchaeology, archaeobotanical Barriers to Data Reuse ■Extent to which data reuse within a discipline is accepted as legitimate (primary vs secondary data collection) ■Trust! - e.g. not explicitly stated how data was collected ■Data reuse may take longer then data creation (Sobotkova 2018) ■Communicating existence and benefits of datasets ■Digital literacy - skills to reuse data for alternative purposes (Garstki 2022) Sobotkova, A. (2018). Sociotechnical Obstacles to Archaeological Data Reuse. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 6(2), 117-124. https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2017.37 "Berlin wall" by Noud W. is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Data Reuse of ADS datasets ■Research suggests low levels of data sharing and data reuse (Huggett 2016, 2017, 2019, Sobotkova 2018) ■Has closely examined archives held by the ADS ■Ethical and legal obligation to archive archaeological data but no one taking it out! ■Physical archives and non-archaeological archives suffer similar reuse problems. ■KL Seaton - Doctoral Research - Some good news! People are reusing ADS data but not necessarily in the ways that we think - TETRARCHs Seminar recording "Reduce Reuse Recycle" by Steve Snodgrass is licensed under CC BY 2.0. FAIR data at the ADS The FAIR Data Principles The Turing Way Community, & Scriberia. (2023). Illustrations from The Turing Way: Shared under CC-BY 4.0 for reuse. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7587336 Wilkinson, M., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. et al. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci Data 3, 160018 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18 Archaeology has spent lots of time understanding F, A and I, but not so much for R How is ADS data FAIR data? R1.1. (Meta)data are released with a clear and accessible data usage license. R1.2. (Meta)data are associated with detailed provenance. R1.3. (Meta)data meet domain-relevant community standards. https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/help-guidance/data-reuse/fair-data/ Image: https://book.fosteropenscience.eu/ R1.1. (Meta)data are released with a clear and accessible data usage license. ■Open Licencing - Creative Commons, Open Government License ■Collections Metadata page - Access and rights section https://doi.org/10.5284/1081262 https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/data-catalogue/ Promoting Collections ■ADS Website ■ADS Newsletter ■Social media Experiments in Reuse Data Literacy - Data Reuse and the Roman Rural Settlement Project Contents: ■Presentation (via Youtube) ■R code for data analysis ■Instructions for using Roman Rural Settlement Project data from the ADS archives https://github.com/nickyjgarland/trac_data_reuse DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7715838 Available via Creative Commons licence - modification and reuse ■Blog posts ■Social media - specific hashtag (#DOIsWithADS) ■Infographics ■Videos (Intro to DOIs) ■Events ●Lunchtime seminar: “Everything you want to know about DOIs and were afraid to ask” ●Wikipedia editing events DOI Promotion - Promote better citation of DOIs for ADS collections Diversified Reuse - Wikipedia Editing events ■Part of DOI Promotion campaign ■Partnered with Richard Nevell, Wikimedia UK 8 editors, 240 articles edited, 328 edits = 3.7m page views ■Youtube video ■Thanks to Lucy Moore for advice on editing events ADS Wikimedia Dashboard Outreach - Being Human Festival - November ‘25 ■Utilised ADS archives to promote understanding of the past ■Hidden stories of female agency in herbalism ■Collaboration with Girl’s Club and Historical Herbalists ‘I have taken away an understanding of archives and archaeology which I didn’t understand before and that archives are available for anyone to access ’ Future plans Plans for further development ■Develop more detailed reuse success stories ■Curated Collections - promotion of collections to appropriate audiences ■Digital Skills Training (via Training Portal): ●Workshops on secondary data for research ●Self guided online training guides ■Let's hear from you! Scan and answer anonymously (3 qs) ■What aspects could we improve on and how could we make our collections more useful? ■Blog post posted early 2026 summarising this session and the results of the survey with plans for the future Call to Action