DINAA currently documents 1,045,319 sites from 41 states, gathered either directly from agencies, through journal text-mining, or through links with museum collections and other online resources and repositories. DINAA holds annual workshops for researchers, museum and library representatives, tribal heritage experts, and data managers to help guide current and future work.
2019 DINAA workshop
- Discuss strategies for adding states not currently participating in DINAA.
- Establish opportunities for training (such as establishing data carpentry courses).
- Explore greater integration with archaeology in cultural resources management (CRM).
- Discuss longer-term management of data, specifically with regard to tribal governance.
- Plan future growth strategies. One conclusion of the meeting was to expand DINAA’s efforts by compiling data from a variety of online sources, including museum collections records, journal articles, and research databases.
One idea being explored is to take bibliographic records generated with public funds in the National Archaeological Data Base (NADB) and link the bibliographic information to specific site records. We also concluded that major next steps for funding should involve establishing a longer-term plan for supporting (1) regular engagement with a compensated DINAA governance board of tribal representatives and (2) ongoing face-to-face workshops with state and tribal data managers in order to provide trainings, seek feedback for improvements to DINAA, and start to build a broader community of individuals who can work with Linked Open Data in U.S. archaeology and cultural heritage.
