For several years the British International Research Institutes (BIRI) have been discussing the digitisation of their archives, and exchanging best practice, with a special interest in developing Linked Open Data. It became clear that the activities of many archaeologists and scholars are reflected in the archives of more than one Institute; our archives also reflect the engagement of many local citizens in the various countries where we operate.
The Archivist of the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), Dr Nurdan Atalan Çayırezmez, worked with the BILNAS archivists in leading a successful bid to the Imagining Futures Network for a project Connecting Archives, Connecting People to explore and establish best practice for identifying and connecting persons in various archives.
We used the analysis of our different archive catalogue structures to develop a set of protocols which can be used to catalogue and identify persons, without imposing unnecessary uniformity: thus the BIAA page – https://digitalrepository.biaa.ac.uk/biaaperson00085, and the BILNAS page – https://slsgazetteer.org/person/18/ for the same person refer to one another, and to external resources, providing an index to each archive and links to others.
Even more important are the Guidelines, which we were able to develop on the basis of our experience for others to use: these are being made available in Arabic, English and Turkish.
Follow this link to access these guidelines in Arabic / اتبع هذا الرابط للوصول إلى هذه التعليمات باللغة العربية.
Follow this link to access the guidelines in English
We were able to reach a wider audience with workshops on the use of Wikidata, which were recorded and are now available to view on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R-oIuGfQmg (English language)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMnrNJxPyo0 (Arabic language / نسخة اللغة العربية)
We very much hope that these materials will be of value to colleagues in Libya and beyond.
– ends –
