For immediate release: November 5, 2003
For more information, contact Susan Griffith at 216-368-1004 or susan.griffith@case.edu

CLEVELAND—Instead of archaeology finds and field notes gathering dust on shelves or packed away in boxes to molder in damp basements, a three-year, $385,000 National Science Foundation grant to Case Western Reserve University Libraries will enable the development of new electronic tools for archaeologists to record discoveries and observations in real time from the field. Developing the virtual archiving of archaeology is a collaborative project of Case, Vanderbilt University and Virginia Tech.

James Flanagan

Eventually the technologies called DigKit (the field recording tools) and DigBase (an enormous catalogue of Near East documents) will find a permanent Web home at Electronic Tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives (ETANA), housed at the campus library at Vanderbilt University.

ETANA is a consortium of institutions that includes Case, Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech along with the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, archaeology institutes at Tel Aviv University and Mississippi State University, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Society of Biblical Literature.

Leading the development of these new tools will be James Flanagan, the Paul J. Hallinan Professor Emeritus in religion at Case.

"This is the first time that library science, computer science and Near Eastern Archaeology have worked in close relationship to preserve and disseminate archaeological data and reports," explains Flanagan.
He is working with co-investigators Joanne Eustis, director of Case's University Libraries; Douglas A. Knight, Vanderbilt University's Professor of Hebrew Bible, and Virginia Tech's Computer Scientists Edward Fox and Weiguo Fan.

Initially archaeological materials gathered from almost a dozen archaeological projects in the Middle East will be housed at ETANA. One dig is the Tell Nimrin Project under the direction of Flanagan and David McCreery from Willamette University. Some of the other well known excavation projects at the ETANA site are Tel Aviv University's Megiddo, Canadian Union College's Madaba Plains Project and Mississippi State University's Tel Halif excavation.

Flanagan says that ideally the project will save researchers countless hours of tracking down volumes of materials to make comparisons. He uses the example of Iron Age pottery that may contain a certain type of bone fragment. In the past, researchers used pictures and drawings from books for comparison. With the digital library resources and by entering a description of the object being researched, all the samples available in the database should come up online for comparison.

Flanagan also points out that storage of artifacts in archaeology is always a concern. Libraries, with established access rules, can provide an ideal repository for information that is accessible to researchers, teachers in all levels of education, students and the general public, adds Flanagan.

"The world is moving toward library systems of collaboratively held digital collections that take advantage of integrated information technology systems to provide access to distributed information," states Eustis.

"The Case Libraries aspire to be at the forefront of the digital library movement. "

According to Eustis, as a charter member of ETANA, Case is partnering with scholars, scholarly societies and peer libraries to make Ancient Near East Studies research available to the world.

In August, the ETANA core text project digitized books published before 1923 on the Ancient Near East. The site, managed by the Kelvin Smith Library's technology team, received nearly 4,000 real hits, notes Eustis.

"While the Case libraries straddle the world of virtual and traditional collections, we believe in the potential of digital libraries to transform research, learning and society. Like teams of scholars, librarians and their academic colleagues are acting strategically through projects like ETANA and funding opportunities such as the NSF award to share knowledge and resources. Possibilities for collaboration and contributions in the future appear boundless," states Eustis.

The NSF's Information Technology Research Division selected the archaeology project from 1475 applications, and it was one of approximately 147 funded.

About Case Western Reserve University

Case is among the nation's leading research institutions. Founded in 1826 and shaped by the unique merger of the Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University, Case is distinguished by its strengths in education, research, and service. Located in Cleveland, Case offers nationally recognized programs in the Arts and Sciences, Dentistry, Engineering, Law, Management, Medicine, Nursing, and Social Sciences. http://www.case.edu.

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