Since March 2007, I have been engaged with the construction of a new Celtic Coin Index (CCI). This is a project that has been running at Oxford University since 1960 and records all known examples of Iron Age coins found. It was previously put online by Hooker and Perron and has been available since 2001. This has not been updated since, but has quite rightly been cited as a wonderful resource for numismatists and the layman.
The Scheme was approached to build on the work of the CCI in early 2005, however, my programming skills were not really up to the task and we did not have any money (neither did they!) to engage a development team. Since then, I have taught myself more about PHP programming and interactive design and have now built a new version of the CCI. This is still in beta phase for a few more months, I want to get feedback, clean up the code and enhance certain aspects of the site. It is the most complex thing I have built, and there will be some bugs inevitably. There’s a few CSS discrepancies, but they will be ironed out shortly. I need a better testing environment at work!
So what is different to the old CCI?
- Built on LAMP platform (linux, apache, MySQL and PHP
- Revised database schema, with new data incorporated
- Uses AJAX to enhance user experience
- Uses google sitemaps to tell Google what to index
- Uses an integrated Google map to visualise the distributed findspots of these coins
- Dynamic image generation from searches - typology can be done on the fly
- Variety of layers added to map to demonstrate distribution of other artefacts
- Allows users to use social web techniques such as bookmarking and voting
- Permission based browsing for researchers
- Multiple download formats for data XML (DCN & MIDAS), RSS, geoRSS (simple - thinking about GML), CSV, JSON, txt and KML
- Graphs can be drawn for data comparisons
- Images can be downloaded for academic use
- PAS data is incorporated
- Grid references have been cleaned and coins relocated on dry land
- Data entry system for adding new coins
- Tagging introduced for user classification of coins
- Integrated with a wordpress blog for discussion articles on Iron Age coins to be posted.
- Incorporates microformats
- An OAI interface has been implemented so that external organisations can consume these data for other services
- A documented RESTful API has been built - details available on demand - so that these data could be mashed up on other sites. Please do!!!! Fully ready by the end of June.
There are a few other things being considered for inclusion within the database’s framework, but perhaps most prominently, the ability to record your own coin on the database if it is not recorded elsewhere.
So what has been the cost for creating this resource; my time (approx 1 hour a day) and £3000 for an intern to clean the data for spatial analysis and to teach her GIS. The fruits of this work will be written up in a separate paper.
I hope that the new resource proves useful to academics, numismatists and anyone interested in coins.
OpenCalais helped to tag this with: AJAX • api • GBP • Google • Linux • Oxford University • php • social web techniques • XML
Possibly related posts: Revamped section and new feature • Roman coins ID pages updated • CBA community archaeology forum launched •
Dan, this sounds very exciting! The CCI is a wonderful resource, and to have it available in nice new website that allows the data to be reused is just fantastic.
The new CCI looks very very promising…
Comment by
Tom Goskar — June 14, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
Celtic Coin Index
I urge you to try out the new Celtic Coin Index website. Dan Pett has built the website for this fabulous resource from scratch, and it’s packed with modern features such as Google Maps, RSS, GeoRSS, tag clouds, and even an API (coming soon).
Th…
Trackback by Past Thinking — June 14, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
Dan
Sorry to be less positive than some, but your database structure suggests that people actively engaged in research on Iron Age coins have not been asked what their requirements are. It may be that the database would admirably suit a coin series which has been researched and accurately catalogued, but it is fair to say that none of the British Iron Age series have been sufficiently researchede, catalogued AND PUBLISHED to enable coins to be entered into the database in such a way that a researcher can access a group of coins without downloading every possible coin that MIGHT be relevant.
The reason that the current CCI web site is so food is it is possible to scan thumbnails of groups of coins to pick out ones with relevant features.
As it stands, the database is effectively useless to anyone involved in research into these coins.
Why, when the current format has received such praise, has a different format been used. Clearly you think you can do better, but from my experience in industry sorting out factories database problems, the world is littered with the results of such thougnts. Generally they arise from a lack of real understanding of the requirements of key users, and I would be interested to hear which active researchers in this area (of more than a couple of years experience) have been consulted to generate the user requirements document before work started in designing the database.
Geoff
Comment by
Geoff — July 7, 2007 @ 11:08 am
Geoff,
Sorry, I have never come across you before, so I can’t say who you know of standing in Iron Age coin research. The people who have been involved:
Philip de Jersey, Ian Leins, Sam Moorhead, Roger Bland, Barry Cunliffe a range of finds liaison officers, staff at the British Museum’s department of coins and medals and a whole swathe of other people have all said what they wanted.
The database structure has been slightly modified from the original postGRES database that Philip de Jersey has been working on for the last few years.
As I document in the blog of the CCI, the dataset is forming the research basis for Ian Leins’ PhD that is hoping to do more for the publication of these coins.
I think you may have missed the point of what the new database is meant to do. It is there for others to reuse the data within their own research and analyse against various datasets. I’m an archaeologist and not a numismatist and I see coins as only one part of the archaeological record.
Why don’t you tell me what you would have liked to have seen? Have you browsed the thumbnails or tried out any of the other features? There’s new features being added slowly - such as tagging that will document prominent features such as iconography, positions etc
The new database is shortly to include all coins reported from 2001 onwards to Philip and the Portable Antiquities Scheme - perhaps another 5000 coins? This will further increase sampling sizes from where better research can be generated. I’ve just attempted to do something in a different manner, with different techniques and some cutting edge web technology. I don’t mind the comments but I would like to know more about why you find it unusable.
Regards
Dan
Comment by
Daniel Pett — July 8, 2007 @ 5:57 pm
Good article. Thanks for it.
Comment by
Coins — July 4, 2008 @ 7:05 am