User:ArchaeoD/sandbox/MicroPasts

MicroPasts

History

MicroPasts is a web platform that establishes collaborations between researchers in museums, archives and universities and members of the public in order to study the human past. . Its development started in October 2013 through a collaboration by the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UCL), and the British Museum. On the 16th of April 2014, a crowd-sourcing platform and community forum were launched where offline archaeological and historical communities can interact with online volunteers worldwide to share in the production of open data. In October 2014 the MicroPasts crowdfunding website was also launched with the aim of supporting small community archaeology and community history projects.

Aim of the Project

The main aim of MicroPasts is to promote high quality data collection and usage both online and offline. The three core activities that participants can get involved in are:

1. Crowd-sourcing: this involves the production of open data sets through a range of different projects and applications, for example transcribing and georeferencing museum index cards, 3D photo-masking archaeological finds or indexing of photographic archives.

2. Discussions on the community forum: this aims to design new research agendas into archaeology, history and heritage by encouraging discussions between established researchers and members of the public. Technical support for crowd-sourcing activities is also addressed on the forum.

3. Crowd-funding: this platform is no longer active but was initially set up to promote raising funds of up to £5000 to finance small projects and invites ideas for new archaeological and historical projects.

Funding bodies and founding partners

UCL

The British Museum

Arts and Humanities Research Council

Portable Antiquities Scheme

Pybossa

Collaborations

Archaeology Data Service

Egypt Exploration Society (EES)

Museo Egizio

New Forest National Park

Oxford University

The Mary Rose Trust

Impact and Outcomes

To date, ?? 3D models have been completed (more stats?), and the network of collaborations with people and institutions is on an international level.

A conference was held on the 31st of March 2015 at the Royal Geographic Society to present the results of the MicroPasts project.

Long term impact comes about through the reliability, scalability and sustainability of the practices used by MicroPasts. This is due to the open source nature of the software and the ease of adaptation, which saves other institutions the time and effort taken to set up a new platform.

Technical Specifications and Web Development

The software used to build the MicroPasts platform is free and open source, and the data generated is also open-licensed and available to the public.