Future Connections: The potential of Web service and Portal technologies for the historic environment

Abstract

Where the other papers in this special edition of Internet Archaeology look at the experiences and achievements of the ARENA project this paper looks to the future. Portal technologies like those used by the ARENA portal are already moving into new and exciting areas, areas such as web services and portlet technologies in particular. This paper considers the work of the ADS in projects such as ARENA, but also HEIRPORT and CREE, work that has revealed new and exciting paths towards data sharing on a European scale. Are these the paths that any new ARENA project will have to follow to sustain the dream of interoperable data sharing for European archaeology?

Keywords

• ARENA
• cultural heritage
• portal
• digital archive
• heritage
• data sharing
• web service
• portlet technologies
• dissemination