ARENA: Opening a Portal for Europe
Readers of ADS News will be familiar with the Archaeological Records of Europe Network Access project (ARENA). Here Project Manager Dr Jon Kenny describes the most important - and technically most demanding - part of this path finding project.
All of the partners in the ARENA network have responsibility for national or regional collections of index data to sites and monuments. ARENA set out to make these data sets searchable through a single interface to achieve interoperability - in other words, to create an ARENA Portal.
The ARENA Portal was launched on 15th November. The portal has been both a technical and organisational achievement, requiring intricate use of data transfer software, the creation of a search interface and mapping of local thesauri terms onto an ARENA top-level of terms.
Interoperability was achieved with a combination of technologies and protocols. Data searching utilises the Z39.50 protocol in combination with a portal technology (Zava, developed by University of Kent) designed for the HEIRPORT portal.
Four partners opted to allow their data to be searched direct using Zava / Z39.50. Two partners created OAI repositories harvested by the ADS and then searched by the ARENA portal. Both routes to interoperability required a top-level data mapping process.
The ARENA 'where' search.
The user-friendly ARENA search interface uses When, What and Where options to build a query.
When: allows the user to select a period. Partners have mapped their period terms onto an ARENA core of eleven. Where the user is confronted by the varied absolute dates for periods across Europe a graphic interface allows them to take this into account in their search building. What: refers to the type of monument being searched for. The ARENA top-level terms that partners map onto are thematic. They represent a start on a complex and ongoing discussion regarding multi lingual / cultural thesauri.
It is possible for searches to be made using just when and what. But with combined data sets of many thousands of records, numbers of results can be unmanageable. The ARENA portal is set to limit results to 5,000. If results are in excess of this limit users are directed to the where option.
Where: in many cases a user will want to search for sites in a particular geographic area. In this case they can build geographic location into a search. This is carried out through a map interface that allows users to home in on a particular location through a GIS based interface (using Map Server an open source option).
The combination of search options allows the user to search for data across national boundaries. By creating a working portal the ARENA partners have taken a significant step along the path to European interoperability. The partners have all agreed that other organisations will be welcome to join the portal, so look out for new additions.
Jon Kenny
jk18@york.ac.uk
The ARENA portal can be accessed at:
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/arena/
