|
|
GIS Guide to Good Practice |
|
|
1.1 Why a GIS Guide to Good Practice?
This document is designed specifically to provide guidance
for individuals and organisations involved in the creation, maintenance,
use and long-term preservation of GIS-based
digital resources. It should be noted that although the overall emphasis is upon
archaeological data, the information presented has much wider
disciplinary implications.
As well as providing a source of useful generic information, the guide emphasises
the processes of long-term
preservation, archiving and effective data re-use. As a result,
the importance of adhering to recognised standards and the recording
of essential pieces of information about a given resource are dominant recurring themes
throughout the discussions.
The latter are designed to smooth the transition of the digital
resource into an archive environment, in particular the Archaeology Data Service (ADS),
and to ensure that it can be re-located and re-used in the future.
It is important to realise that the current document is one of
a family of theme-specific guides, some of which contain much
more detailed discussions of many of the topics outlined here,
such as the integration of satellite images, and the precise formats
and convention standards used within CAD layers. Although each
guide, whether concerned with GIS, CAD, geophysical survey or
remote sensing, is specifically designed to be self-contained,
taken together they comprise a comprehensive, authoritative and
highly complementary set of practical guidelines.
In outlining the aims of the document, it is equally important
to state what the current guide does not cover. It
does not aim to constitute an exhaustive introduction to the underlying
origin, theory and technical implementation of GIS. Nor is it
in any way a definitive and prescriptive manual on how 'best'
to undertake GIS. Although the importance of standards and data
frameworks will be rightly emphasised, the aim of the guide is
to introduce practitioners to areas and issues where standards
and frameworks already exist and may be applicable, and to identify
the relevant sources of information that may be consulted. Whilst
optimum pathways will often be identified, the guide
does not rigidly advocate any single standard or narrow set of
options. Instead, the concern here is more generic, with the aim
of encouraging and developing the routine use of standards and
data frameworks as a whole. In this sense it is important to realise
that the present document constitutes a guide as opposed
to a manual.
It is also important to note that this guide is concerned
solely with archaeological data and GIS, whether derived from
excavation, regional survey, archival research, intra-site analysis
or any other archaeological endeavour. It is not concerned with
the integration, archiving and accessing of data destined for
study, maintenance and future re-use within CAD systems. This
topic will be covered in detail in the forthcoming CAD and Excavation
and Fieldwork guides to good practice.
|
|
The right of Mark Gillings, Peter Halls, Gary Lock, Paul Miller, Greg Phillips, Nick Ryan, David Wheatley, and Alicia Wise to be identified as the Authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All material supplied via the Arts and Humanities Data Service is protected by copyright, and duplication or sale of all or part of any of it is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your personal research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. Permission for any other use must be obtained from the Arts and Humanities Data Service(info@ahds.ac.uk). Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise, to any third party.
|
|
