On 2 February, the updated ARIADNE portal, an international platform for archaeological research data, was launched. The portal has been developed as part of the EU project ARIADNEplus, where SND participates.
The purpose of ARIADNEplus is to evolve and build on the infrastructure for archaeological research data that was created in the previous project ARIADNE (2013–2017). One result of these efforts is an international search portal that collects archaeological data and related resources. The new release of the portal has received improved functionality and a wider search area.
—What we release now is an update and improvement of the entire search portal. We have included, among other things, new subject areas and time periods. Where you could previously find data dating back to the Palaeolithic period, now you will also be able to search palaeoanthropological [the study of extinct members of Homo sapiens and fossil hominids] material. The previous portal had more of a focus on excavation data and a few other fields, but we will now, for instance, have more data from environmental archaeology, dating, and scientific analyses, says SND research data advisor Ulf Jakobsson, who participates in the project.
In ARIADNEplus, SND leads the technical activities in developing the portal. An important part of this work is to improve searchability. This is achieved by, for instance, providing data that are made accessible with more and better metadata, or descriptive information, which makes it easier to find the right data when you search the portal.
—This demands a bit more from those who want to make data accessible in the portal, but it also increases the possibility to actually find what you’re looking for, says Ulf Jakobsson.
Pablo Millet, system developer at SND, is one of the developers behind the ARIADNE portal. He says that the user interface and functionality have been adapted to specifications and requests, but that the main changes are back-end, in the technology behind the interface.
—The page may look more or less the same, but the system has been given an enormous makeover and modernisation, and this will give the user a better experience. What the user will see is that we’ve added several new functions to improve the search options. Smart filters that adapt to your searches make it much easier to limit searches. For one thing, you can now use the map to limit a search area, and the filter options will adapt to that specific area. That way, you can also combine aspects such as place and time period.
Further Development and EOSC Integration
The ARIADNEplus tasks will continue up to the year-end 2022/2023. Until then, the development of the technology behind the search service will proceed, and these latest updates provide a foundation for that work.
The goal is to also integrate the platform with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), where the resources in the ARIADNE portal will be searchable. The portal will also become more interactive. The plan is to develop virtual research environments where researchers can find not only data, but also get tools to process these data through the portal.