Digital Standards for Research Data from Human Skeletal Collections – Workshop in Freiburg

The Biological Anthropology department at Freiburg University (Germany) is currently developing a digital standard for human skeletal data. It can be used to produce structured data sets and serves as a data model for the osteological coding software ‘RDFBones’, that is being developed in parallel.
Unlike existing software, the digital standard serves as an infrastructure for scientists to implement their own research designs as software extensions, to which data entry forms in the coding software adapt automatically. These extensions are formulated according to the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and are not bound to any specific software (including RDFBones). They can be published and shared with other researchers, who can load them into their own software installations. The system supports provision of standardised data coding software to large numbers of researchers and pooling of compatible data sets from different sources.
On 7th/8th October 2016, a workshop at Freiburg University will introduce and discuss the RDFBones data standard and coding software and provide hands-on experience. Registration through the workshop webpage is open until 20 August 2016.