Legacy Records and Digital Innovation: The Chaco Research Archive and Beyond

This is a pdf copy of the PPT slides used for the presentation in the SAA symposium. Over the last 12 years, the authors of this paper have been involved in a range of digital curation activities pertaining to legacy records and the integration and manipulation of those data to create new knowledge about the past. Primarily, we have worked together to create the Chaco Research Archive (CRA) and a variety of complementary projects including a mobile application and, more recently, the Salmon Pueblo Archaeological Research Collection (SPARC). In this paper we describe the creation, maintenance and preservation aspects of the CRA and SPARC; outline nascent efforts focused on the digital curation of Ohio Hopewell legacy collections; and review our involvement in discussions of digital heritage ethics. In sum, we outline how these projects have and continue to add value to existing collections and review the challenges that lie yet ahead.