Arachne

iDAI.objects arachne (short form: Arachne) is the central object-database (administrator: Reinhard Förtsch) of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and the Cologne Digital Archaeology Laboratory (CoDArchLab) at the University of Cologne. Arachne is intended to provide archaeologists and Classicists with a free internet research tool for quickly searching hundreds of thousands of records on objects and their attributes. This combines an ongoing process of digitizing traditional documentation (stored on media that are both threatened by decay and largely unexplored) with the production of new digital object and graphic data. Wherever possible, Arachne follows a paradigm of highly structurized object-metadata which is mapped onto the CIDOC-CRM, to address machine-readable metadata strategies of the Semantic Web. This »structured world« of Arachne requires high efforts in time and money and therefore is only possible for privileged areas of data. While on the ever-increasing range of new, digital born data in reality only a small effort-per-object ratio can be applied. It therefore requires a “low-threshold” processing structure that is located in the »unstructured world« of Arachne. All digital (graphic and textual) information is secure on a Tivoli Storage System (featuring long-term multiple redundancy) and distributed online through the Storage Area Network in Cologne. Object modelling and design Arachne's database design uses a model that builds on one of the most basic assumptions one can make about archaeology, classical archaeology or art history: all activities in these areas can most generally be described as contextualizing objects. Arachne tries to avoid the basic mistakes of earlier databases, which limited their object modelling to specific project-oriented aspects, thus creating separated containers of only a small number of objects. All objects inside Arachne share a general part of their object model, to which a more class-specific part is added that describes the specialised properties of a category of material like architecture or topography. Seen on the level of the general part, a powerful pool of material can be used for general information retrieval, whereas on the level of categories and properties, very specific structures can be displayed. Arachne aims to create interoperability between different systems while protecting the copyrights of the authors.