This presentation was given at the GLAM wiki conference held at the British Museum on the 27 - 28th November 2010. Some slides have been removed due to the image rights belonging to the finder of the Crosby Garrett Helemt.

1. Integrating volunteers and Experts- examplesfrom
the Portable Antiquities Scheme
Dan Pett
TheBritish Museum
dpett@britishmuseum.org

2. Portable Antiquities Scheme
• 18,300 contributors of
data
• 660,000 objects recorded
• 417,000 geo-referenced
find spots
• All available under CC NC-
BY-SA
• Driving archaeological
knowledge of rural areas
• Funded by DCMS
• Employs 56 people
• Deal with public
discovery of
archaeology
• Started in 1997
• Costs £1.4mill per
annum
• IT budget c.£5000

3. Recording: one chance
 Our staff generally have one
chance to record
 Dissemination online is swift,
cheap, easy
 There is no other
archaeological database of this
size
 It is underused for research at
present
 The data it contains can tell a
thousand stories of our shared
heritage

4. Finds recorded per year
Year Finds
1998 4588
1999 8200
2000 18106
2001 16368
2002 11996
2003 25464
2004 38997
2005 52188
2006 58306
2007 79010
2008 56448
2009 66515
2010 214840
0
50000
100000
150000
200000
250000
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Foot & mouth
Scheme reviewed by MLA
OAD go bust
New database launched
2010 – imported two
large datasets and
one coin hoard of
53,000 objects

5. Most data is sourced from metal-detecting

6. GPS co-ordinates if possible

7. www.finds.org.uk
417,000 records 663,000 objects 18,300 people involved

8. Why is the spatial data so
important?
Without provenance:
 A museum cannot acquire an object
 Is it looted?
 Did the landowner give permission?
 Context has been lost, we don’t know the
significance of the location of discovery.

9. All objects we have recorded
• 1997 – 2010
• Topographical features drive
discovery
• Landowners and regulations
can prevent discovery
• Biases present in data
collection eg. Staff illness,
lack of car etc etc

10. Staff based here
Here be mountains

13. Types of objects recorded
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
Metal objects Coins Lithics Pottery Other

14. Chronological distribution of finds
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000
20000
Stone
Age
Bronze
Age
Iron
Age
Rom
an
Early
m
edieval
M
edieval
Post-m
edieval

15. Method of discovery of objects recorded
by PAS
Metal detecting
Metal detecting, eyes only
Chance
Fieldwalking
Controlled arch.
investigation

16. About us on Wikipedia

17. Sparse entry on Treasure Act

18. Wikipedia referrals – finds.org.uk
March 24th – November 24th
Source Visits PPV Mean visitlength Visits
en.wikipedia.org 933 4.148982 4 minutes 933
en.m.wikipedia.org 14 1.571429 30 seconds 14
fr.wikipedia.org 12 4.666667 3 minutes 12
it.wikipedia.org 1 4 3 minutes 1
Disappointingly low referral rate 0.41% from 4 domains

19. Wikipedia referrals – britishmuseum.org
March 24th – November 24th 2010
Referral rate 1.26% from 108 domains
Source Visits Pages/Visit Avg. Time on Site Visits
en.wikipedia.org 50377 6.266074 3 minutes 12 50377
ja.wikipedia.org 7911 4.82834 2 minutes 20 7911
es.wikipedia.org 4239 6.501533 3 minutes 17 4239
de.wikipedia.org 3979 6.16185 2 minutes 43 3979
ru.wikipedia.org 3790 8.004485 4 minutes 3790
fr.wikipedia.org 3166 6.502843 2 minutes 54 3166
it.wikipedia.org 1337 9.849663 4 minutes 49 1337
fa.wikipedia.org 1133 3.076787 2 minutes 33 1133
zh.wikipedia.org 994 5.385312 4 minutes 994
pt.wikipedia.org 969 6.215686 3 minutes 47 969

20. Major contributors
• User:Victuallers
• User:BabelStone
• User:Martinevans123
• User:AgTigress (I think this is Catherine Johns of BM)
• There’s more of course…..
• Amazingly fast generation of stubs after we announce
things
• Feed data and images to wikipedians that I’ve met or know
from the online social network
• We let people know before the announcement about big
new discoveries

21. Ringlemere gold cup

22. British Museum record

23. The Frome Hoard

24. Frome DYK stats

25. Frome (Somerset) Hoard

26. Shrewsbury Hoard

27. Staffordshire Moorlands trulla

28. Scheme record

29. Crosby Garrett Helmet
• Troublesome case
• No images of this were in
the public domain with
appropriate licence
• Images sourced at auction
and specifically noted for use
by wikipedia (I tweeted this at
the time….)
•Discussion note:
Here are some pictures of the auction:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/finds/sets/721576
25114008100/ under cc-by. These were
specifically noted by Daniel Pett from the
Portable Antiquities Scheme as being made that
way to help WP:
http://twitter.com/#!/portableant/status/26650
916903 Witty Lama 14:11, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

30. Crosby Garrett Helmet

31. Our images in wikipedia

32. Wikimedia commons
• Mostly uploaded by Victuallers after we met at the Hoxne challenge
• Around 1200 images so far

33. Hoard list – many of these are first
reported via PAS

34. The Newark Torc

35. Thornbury Hoard

36. The Hallaton Hoard

37. Vale of York Hoard

38. Scheme staff

39. Dbpedia – Staffordshire Hoard

40. Licences we use
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike
cc by-nc-sa
Attribution Share Alike
cc by-sa
Attribution
cc by
Attribution Non-Commercial
cc by-nc
If you don’t like the licence we have issued on the work, contact us, we
might waive it…..

43. Initial impact
• 2000 conn/per sec to
server on launch day
• Never went offline
• Experienced slow
performance
• Content caching helped
get the site through the
initial onslaught
Day Pages
24/09 1,306,545
25/09 1,772,572
26/09 553,285
27/09 351,070
28/09 267,385
29/09 164,039
[..] Present ~ 25,000
Launch

44. Flickr daily views @ launch
Day Flickr views
24/09 281,970
25/09 161,630
26/09 59,200
27/09 47,900
28/09 32,770
29/09 22,030
* As far as I am aware, this doesn’t include API views, of which the website made use
and I used elsewhere.

45. Referrers and search [flickr]
Very few people clicked
through from
staffordshirehoard.org.uk –
were they stuck in the silo
there?
Always get lots of searches for our
female Time Team staff

46. Flickr stats
Processed from - http://stats.vispillo.org

55. BBC News front page

56. In the news

57. PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>
PREFIX : <http://dbpedia.org/resource/>
PREFIX dbpedia2: <http://dbpedia.org/property/>
PREFIX dbpedia: <http://dbpedia.org/>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX dbpedia-owl: http://dbpedia.org/ontology/
SELECT *
FROM <http://dbpedia.org/sparql/>
WHERE {
?king foaf:page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_England> .
OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia-owl:abstract ?abstract} .
OPTIONAL {?king foaf:depiction ?depiction}.
OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia-owl:thumbnail ?thumb} .
OPTIONAL {?king dbpedia2:imgw ?imgw} .
?king foaf:page ?page.
FILTER langMatches( lang(?abstract), "en")
}
LIMIT 1
Querying dbpedia for data

59. Ingested dbpedia sparql results
All names correspond
with wikipedia
Depiction
Abstract
Direct link to
wikipedia
Complements our data for latest
examples and maps of findspots etc

60. Numismatic guides
Data consumed from wikipedia (via
dbpedia)
Latest examples found and
recorded
High resolution image of pristine
example
Instant map of findspots
Lists of available
denominations/mints/types etc

61. Recent news
• Scheme funding cut by
15% over 4 years
• Now managed by the
BM and not MLA
• Have recorded over
200,000 objects this
year
• IT budget is less than
£5000

62. The end.
Visit our website : www.finds.org.uk
Contact me:
dpett@britishmuseum.org
Twitter: @portableant