It takes uncommon vision to create a preservation website that remains both current and accurate over the long term. At Iowa State University, the team that created “I-Sites,” a PTT Grant, is taking a 20/20 view of this dilemma by creating a website that allows preservation professionals in Iowa to share the latest research.
“I-Sites is an example of a web application that has the potential to draw professional archeologists and agencies together into a body of researchers and planners that are well-informed and closely-connected, despite the miles that separate us,” Joe Artz, I-Sites project team leader said. “An archeologist registered to use I-Sites has 24-7 access, via personal computer and the web, to information that was previously available only by traveling to, or requesting copies from, Office of the State Archaeologist in Iowa City.”
I-Sites contributes to information management in historic preservation in Iowa by resolving the all-too-often overlooked need to keep preservation-related databases current with existing and ever-growing knowledge. According to Artz, preparation was the key to ensuring the site would be comprehensive and sustainable. His group spent two years digitizing archeological site locations in Iowa into a GIS even while adding some 1,800 new records that arrived during that period.
One of the ways the team ensured sustainability is by building the site on the foundation of a relational database. Additionally, the website empowers users to record new archeological data, giving those who most urgently need the data an active role in keeping it current.
I-Sites also makes use of cutting-edge Internet Map Server technology to deliver much of the functionality of GIS-driven maps to a broader spectrum of individuals, firms, and agencies that need to know about where sites are located, but who may lack GIS software or training. UI-OSA’s partners at the University of Missouri and Iowa State University participated in creating I-Sites twin map servers—a public site and a site for professional users.
Even with the complex technology involved in building the project’s infrastructure, its goal was simplicity for contributors and end users. I-Sites was conceived as a web-based application that would help the project team keep databases and GIS information current by enabling users to enter new data and make simple queries of existing data, freeing the small staff’s limited resources to concentrate on improving data quality and responding to more complex query requests.
The I-Sites project team chose to submit a grant to NCPTT because, Artz says, “It seemed to me that NCPTT was looking to fund exactly the kind of project that my organization needed to do as the next step in taking the Iowa Site File into the 21st century.”
In the future, the project team hopes to broaden the information available online included in the I-Sites databases. Artz says plans include adding aerial photography, in addition to the present base maps of USGS quads, to the internet map server. He also anticipates adding a database and GIS of archeological survey areas.
Visit I-Sites at http://www.uiowa.edu/~osa/gisatosa/isites.htm