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Interoperability: Towards European Heritage Infrastructure?

William Kilbride and Jon Kenny
Archaeology Data Service
United Kingdom

National and supra-national heritage agencies place increasing emphasis on data sets as a tool in the management of archaeological heritage: an emphasis which has obvious consequences for the research, learning and teaching communities who may create or use this data for their own purposes. A multitude of conflicting local and national organisations have interests in local and national monuments records, This inhibits the ´boundary-less research´ of the academic community, and hampers the development of genuinely trans-national heritage policy: both stated aims of the EU. It also stands in the way of broadly defined educational initiatives that seek to promote social inclusion through the deployment of electronic cultural resources. There are numerous political, economic and institutional issues in overcoming these obstacles, but inter-operability provides a model to resolve the significant technical problems.

For the last few years, the ADS has been developing integrated access to varied data sets on behalf of the UK Higher Education community. Using open standards and established technologies, the ADS has created a unified ´inter-operable´ portal for disparate data sets in the UK and further afield (described at previous ECAI / PNC meetings). This paper will present some of the technologies and standards by which this has been made possible, but with an eye to European developments. Developing a portal beyond the confines of the UK presents peculiar problems, in part because of linguistic differences. This paper will therefore end with a brief review of the current state of developments in sharing archaeological data, and some of the steps that may be necessary if we are to create a single european research area. In proposing and preparing the way for a "joined-up" European heritage infrastructre, we present and reflect on themes relevant to global initiatives like ECAI.