Case study: National Service for Archeology...
Rijksdienst voor Archeologie, Cultuurlandschap en Monumenten (RACM) | Amersfoort, Lelystad, Zeist | www.archis.nl
The Rijksdienst voor Archeologie, Cultuurlandschap en Monumenten (National Service for Archaeology, Cultural Landscape and Built Heritage) forms part of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. Along with other parties, it takes care of Dutch above-ground, underground and underwater cultural heritage.
Activities
Through various channels, the RACM provides companies, organisations and the public with information on valuable cultural heritage in the Netherlands. The organisation acts as a partner in the development and execution of town and country plans and collaborates in policy development. It does research, provides subsidies in the field of archaeology and the preservation of cultural landscape and monuments and historic buildings, and is charged with the implementation and enforcement of the Monumentenwet (Monuments and Historical Buildings Act).
Knowledge sharing
The RACM takes care of the systematic sharing of information and knowledge on Dutch cultural historical objects. For this purpose, the organisation manages a Nationaal Scheepsarcheologisch Depot (National Maritime Archaeological Depot), a register and database of listed buildings, protected townscapes (Monuments and Historical Buildings Acts) and a centralised archaeological information system (Archis2) in which archaeological experts can record and view information.
When publishing, archiving and sharing knowledge or defining policy, organisations always revert to basic concepts and the collective memory. However, in doing so, they presuppose that the meaning of these designations and terms is clear to everyone. Typologies offer ideal handles for this, because they describe, by means of reference collections, the variability of a material group in a standardised and compact way.
Consequently, the RACM collaborates with the Nationale Referentiecollectie.
National Reference Collection
The Nationale Referentiecollectie (National Reference Collection or NRc) contains archaeological objects that are representative for a particular type of object. As part of a pilot project, the RACM has developed two type collections: a glass collection consisting of 320 objects with descriptions, photos, drawings and references to secondary literature, and the Corpus Middeleeuws Aardewerk (Medieval Ceramics Corpus), which comprises approximately 450 descriptions and drawings of findings.
The RACM intends to make the information included in its current and future type collections available in a coherent way. Users looking for a particular subject should be presented with as much information on that subject as possible, including any information that is somehow related to the subject. No information that is present in a database should be excluded from the search results.
Because of the strongly heterogeneous nature of the collections and databases, the RNA project uses various basic description models that together offer room for descriptions from various collections that can seamlessly complement each other.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007