Dear all,

I too have been listening to the discussion for the last couple of days
and thinking about the relationship between the IFA standards and other
standards documents.

I'm glad that William Kilbride recommended the 2nd Edition of the Guide
to Good Practice for Excavation and Fieldwork archiving as bedtime
reading! When we were working on the revision we looked at the IFA
standards and found that they set out the procedures and stages very
clearly.  For example:

3.2.17 of the Standard & Guidance for Archaeological Excavation sets out
what should be covered as a minimum in the specification or project
design. It describes who should prepare this and who should be informed
about the fieldwork.

The project specification/design obviously influences what data will be
produced during the fieldwork, what the supporting metadata will be and
it also documents the project methodology and so on.  This is very
useful in terms of advance planning for digital archiving.  It's much
easier (and more efficient) if everyone knows in advance what data is
going to be produced, the documentation that they need to provide to
support it & the formats that are currently preferred. Trying to
document data retrospectively or migrate from a non-standard proprietory
format can be a nightmare for all concerned - the fieldworkers, the
national agencies, SMRs and digital archives.

The G2GP recommends good practices in handling the huge range of digital
data that can be produced during the normal course of archaeological
fieldwork.  If it's a small-scale project and the fieldworker's normal
practice is to create paper archives, the Guide doesn't advocate
retrospective digitisation - except in special circumstances.

As I see it one of the benefits of improving the links between the G2GP
(and other standards documents) with the IFA standards is giving timely
reminders to fieldworkers of things that need to be given consideration
at the planning stage.  I'd advocate a neatly worded clause about
relevant standards for digital data in the section of the IFA standards
documents that deals with project
briefs/outlines/specifications/design.  Also an appendix that lists the
standards & includes links to on-line documents where
possible.

with best wishes,

Kate



--
Kate Fernie
Research Officer
Archaeology Data Service

Dept of Archaeology     t 0044 (0)1904 433973
University of York      f 0044 (0)1904 433939
England YO1 7EP, UK
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