DCCD Facility

The DCCD facility provides a much needed facility for large-scale cultural studies in dendrochronology, a direction of wood research given top priority in the National Research Agenda for Archaeology.* After completion the DCCD is easily accessible for querying and downloading through the Internet, while also offering data owners the possibility to control the access to specific data (authorization procedures, level-defined access).

The DCCD also serves a research-political purpose. Due to commercial research and a lack of archiving standards in cultural dendrochronology many data end up outside any program of preservation and publicity of government-funded knowledge. The process of shaping the DCCD will lead to the formulation of much-needed archiving standards, while the DCCD itself will safeguard the data and will make, and keep, them available for future research. For this reason the plans for the DCCD have been designed in close collaboration with Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), the national organization in the Netherlands responsible for storing and providing permanent access to research data from the Humanities and Social Sciences.

The DCCD will contain cultural and natural dendrochronological data and metadata relevant to cultural and related interdisciplinary studies of the past in the Low Counties and (with imported wood) beyond. Users are able to search for and extract data using search modules designed with the important research questions in mind. Users outside of dendrochronology are able to receive fast overviews of dendrochronological research. In addition, the DCCD contains modules designed for educational purposes, with a bearing on dendrochronological sampling and measuring, dendrochronological dating and other research, and which include example data sets and chronologies. After the end of the project, the content of the DCCD will continue to grow because the participating laboratories will produce new data and new participants will join the DCCD.

The DCCD combines a Trusted Digital Repository of data from laboratories in the Low Countries with linked archives stored separately. In the facility existing data formats are used and converted to a data model for storage. An XML-scheme enables durable storage. This scheme can be used to exchange data and metadata between information systems. A user interface enables both the authors and users of the data to query the archive. The DCCD contains modules for geographical, chronological and object oriented queries, coordinate translation (national and international NEN-norm coordinates), data conversion (for uploading and downloading data) and educational purposes.

The descriptive metadata are visible to all who enter the website. Levels of user access to the underlying measurement series and chronologies and their dendrochronological interpretations are managed by the suppliers (owners) of these data.

• Elements of the DCCD can be used in existing archives of natural and cultural sub-soil data (Utrecht University; Laaglandgenese (LLG) Database;
  
  
• TNO, http://dinolks01.nitg.tno. nl/dinoLks/DINOLoket.jsp;
  
  
• Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (national registration system of archaeological finds ARCHIS);
  
  
• and other digital archives and environments:
  
  
• eDNA;
  
  
• KICH.
  
  At any time links to new archives can be created and new content can be added. An international network (data owners, users, advisory board) will meet at regular times to evaluate the efficiency of the archive and to propose adaptations, which will be made operational by RACM.