• January 8, 2026 | 8:00 AM - 10:30 AM
• Golden Gate 5, Lobby Level

1A: Publishing Data and Using Published Data: A Demo Session with Open Context (Workshop)

Organizers:
Sarah W. Kansa, Open Context, and Eric C. Kansa, Open Context

This demonstration workshop provides an interactive walkthrough of Open Context (https://opencontext.org), an online archaeological data publishing service. Launched in 2006, Open Context has published 200 projects, amounting to over 2 million items (objects, observations, contexts), and 150,000 images. This workshop is for people interested in learning how to discover and use data in Open Context, as well as data authors seeking more information on the publication process.

The first hour of this workshop will focus on the “data reuser” perspective. We will begin with a tour of Open Context data publications to give participants a sense of the diversity of datasets that can be used for research and teaching. We will choose a few projects to explore in more depth, highlighting the features of each that help make them easier to use (for analysis or integration with other data from across the web). We will then demonstrate how to conduct searches in Open Context (in individual data publications as well as across multiple projects) and the various ways search results can be displayed and downloaded for reuse.

During the second hour, we will look at Open Context from the “data author” perspective, exploring the wide variation of data that archaeologists create (spreadsheets, maps, images, fieldnotes, databases) and discussing some of the challenges data creators face around documentation, data selection, access, and working with multiple contributors. We will conclude the workshop by walking through an Open Context data ingest form to give participants a sense of what to keep in mind as they prepare their data for publication.