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- Info
The American School of Classical Studies at Athens
The Organization and Deployment of Information Resources at the ASCSA
The American School of Classical Studies at Athens was founded in 1881 to provide North American graduate students and scholars with a base for research and study in Greece. The School opened excavations in Ancient Corinth in 1896 and in the Athenian Agora in 1931. A Publications Office was established to disseminate the results of this work, producing the first issue of the quarterly journal, Hesperia, in 1932. The Gennadius Library for post-classical studies was opened in 1926, complementing the predominantly classical and prehistoric focus of the Blegen Library. The most recent addition to the School’s facilities has been the Wiener Laboratory for Archaeological Sciences, founded in 1992. Through the activities and acquisitions of these research units, the School has amassed a rich and varied primary and secondary collection of information in all formats, but increasingly digital.
While digital resources offer great potential for scholarship, they also pose substantial management challenges for staff and systems more used to handling physical artifacts. Recognizing the need for new skills and new forms of organization to handle digital assets, the School was awarded planning grants in both 2003 and 2005 from the Mellon Foundation. These were used to fund Visiting Committees of library specialists to advise on integrated digital asset management systems and strategies. The Committee reports formed the basis for a 2006 application to Mellon that was generously funded. Implementation has since proceeded over an 18 month period.
Two thirds of the grant funds are being spent on strengthening the School’s technological infrastructure. There has been some hardware and software expenditure, particularly on the Corinth excavations, but the main focus has been on expert consultancy. A team of School information specialists working with Thornton Staples of the Fedora Commons Foundation have been developing a prototype digital repository capable of handling archaeological datasets, as well as more traditional image and text files. At the same time, the web consulting firm MStoner has planned and implemented a new website which provides a single point of access to the developing information infrastructure, as well as becoming the School’s primary communication tool with its stakeholders.
The remaining one third of the grant has been spent on streamlining and coordinating library, IT, and archival services and improving staff skills in handling digital resources. This has involved the employment of consultants in collections assessment and technical services, as well as staff participation in various training opportunities.
The effect of the Mellon grant has been to reveal new links and clarify old relationships. Traditional “ways of doing things” have been questioned and new synergies are evolving. Sites, like the Agora and Corinth, that were previously studied separately are starting to be compared and contrasted. The School’s two libraries that maintained separate workflows and policies are seeing the benefits of standardization. And new links are being forged outside the institution. The process has not been without pain, and it is clearer now than it was in 2006 that the School is only in Phase 1 of a complex adaptation to cope with the demands that digital scholarship places on research institutions.
More information about the School’s digital initiatives can be found at:
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