Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) promotes sustained access to digital research data. For this purpose, DANS encourages researchers to archive and reuse data in a sustained manner, e.g. through the online archiving system EASY. DANS also provides access, via NARCIS.nl, to thousands of scientific datasets, e-publications and other research information in the Netherlands. In addition, the institute provides training and advice, and performs research into sustained access to digital information.
Driven by data, DANS ensures that access to digital research data keeps improving, through its services and by taking part in national & international projects and networks. DANS is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The e-depot for Dutch archaeology e-Depot Nederlandse Archeologie (EDNA), is accommodated at DANS. The e-depot stores the digital files with research data of Dutch archaeologists. These are the files with the primary archaeological data of excavations, regional explorations and material studies. It notably concerns completed and published research results, of which the basic data have been made accessible to other researchers by the author(s). The trend to make data available to users is clearly continuing, as by now more than 19,000 archaeological datasets have been archived. The e-depot will ensure durable archiving and unlocking of all digital documentation of the archaeological research. Both the research descriptions and all data can be downloaded via the archiving system EASY.
RCE, the National Dutch Agency for Heritage, has agreed to provide KNAW-DANS with archaeological data and the access to the data collected by the Digital Collaboratory for Cultural Dendrochronology, in view of its international consolidation and expansion. Thus KNAW-DANS will make such important datasets available to the project in which it is a partner.
Role in the project
KNAW-DANS will participate in the European infrastructure project ARIADNE, to facilitate access to, and integration of excavation and monument record data. KNAW-DANS will expand and improve access to its online archiving system EASY to the international research community and will harmonize and linking information by semantic web technologies (linked data) to improve the accessibility of the data.
Online services
DANS http://dans.knaw.nl/en provides online access https://easy.dans.knaw.nl to the e-Depot for Dutch Archaeology (EDNA): including over 17,000 archaeological reports and 3,000 large datasets consisting of research data (photos, GIS, data-tables, drawings) of excavations and explorations.
The Digital Collaboratory for Cultural Dendrochronology (DCCD) http://dendro.dans.knaw.nl/ is the only tree-ring (meta)data network existing in Europe and a trusted digital repository at DANS. It contains over 50,000 measurement series of different wood species derived from ca. 5,200 objects and sites dating between 6000 BC and present.
Website: http://www.dans.knaw.nl/