AZSITE Consortium
Meeting Minutes
ASM, Tucson
January 8, 2003
Present
Michael Barton, ASU, presiding
Beth Grindell, ASM, recording
Carol Griffith, SHPO
David Wilcox, MNA
Rick Karl, ASM
Cara Schmidt, SWCA, Phoenix
Chris Sevara, Tierra ROW
Ingrid Klune, Tierra ROW
The meeting was called to order at 1:45 p.m.
The minutes from the October 31, 2002, meeting were approved .
Grants: Carol Griffith reported that SHPO will not hear on their NEH grant until next spring. She discussed the need for sensitivity map layers for use by community planners who need to know generally archaeologically sensitive areas without exposing detailed site location area. The NEH grant would perhaps cover this type of application as well as get SHPO data into the system.
Database report: Rick Karl reported that 125 sites (new or corrected) and 100 projects get added on a monthly basis. Several fields were added to accommodate SHPO historians' concerns. Several additions have been made to the map application web page. New data appear weekly in database, although there is still a 30 day lag time before it appears on the interactive web page. Various bugs appear to have been fixed.
A printable Project Registration Form that will satisfy the BLM and ASM needs for project forms is the next project. It will include many more data fields than presently and will be able to print both BLM and ASM versions of the form.
The new server, in the works for 3 months, (the old one is 7 years old) has now been installed (just last night). There do not appear to have been any problems in the switch from the old to the new. It will now be possible to install the 7.5' USGS maps, which was a major request. Barton reported that the new Server is a Sun Server running under Apache. IT should be must more stable under Unix than it was under NT. A new PLSS layer was added. Searches by map quad name will be possible with new maps. We will schedule another user meeting for this spring after the new server has been running for about a month. There are now about 8000 references added to the application developed by Steve Savage at ASP. We are also linking the references to the projects. We are also linking the project references to the sites, and all new data go in with that link. Barton noted that ASM has filmed and scanned its project registration forms and those will be made available on the web site soon. This was paid for out of ASM records management fees.
Barton commented on the AZSITE fees used for MNA data entry, new server, various software licenses.
Beth Grindell noted that ASM is planning to scan ASM site cards and add them to the web page, as it has with the project registration forms. Carol Griffith talked about the SHPO undertaking number and the need for that to be included in the records so that SHPO can get to the appropriate records in AZSITE. This number allows SHPO to link projects, reports, and maps and it is critical to get this number into AZSITE at the contractor level when records are submitted. Usually this number should be obtained from the land managing agency, if not call SHPO. SHPO will attempt to copy letters to agencies to the contractor when the contractor is known. The naming convention is "SHPO-Year-number" which the SHPO assigns.
Barton mentioned that it is the time of year to renew user agreements. The deadline is February 3. At this time, all users who have not re-applied accounts will be discontinued. Carol reminded all that the signer on the last page of the agreement should be the responsible party for that company's use of the data: the company president, chief PI, chief archaeologist.
Management: The server has continued to be located at ASU. The technical reasons for this are ending and the main server will move to ASM. With that move, it will be possible to remove tribal data that is in there, unless we hear from tribes that it should remain. We will send letters to the tribes to tell them this will happen, per earlier requests.
New Business
Intertribal council has requested a demonstration but the date of the next meeting of the cultural resource specialists has not yet been established.
Public comment
Anastacia Gutierrez requested to know if the accession number from ASM has been implemented yet. ASM is implementing that, and it should be seamless from the point of view of the outside user. It will just replace the old ASM project number.
The next user meeting will be end February in Tempe/Phoenix.
All voiced an interest in getting the 7.5' maps on line.
Barton noted that the current plan is to consolidate the web service at ASU under one roof at ASU GIS and transfer the major database to ASM on one server. This will mean one log in rather than 2 separate one. This will also make the linking of AZMAP and the project data faster and cleaner. It also means that the querying on the existing AZMAP will be more sophisticated, allowing searching on all fields in the database, not just the fields that we currently transfer periodically to ASU from ASM.
Steve Savage noted that the 7.5' maps will be in NAD 1927 datum and most GPS units are in NAD 1983 so these must be converted before including in AZSITE. Regina Chapin-Pyritz asked if the reference citation will be a full citation and the answer was yes. To be clear, the spatial data are housed in AZMAP and the associated data are in the Attributes page.
Cara Schmidt asked if AZSITE will rely more heavily on the user fee. Barton commented that yes, the user fees are important. We do and are going after other sources of money. Our preference is to get larger annual sums from land managers and not charge contractors but until that happens we get the funds indirectly via fees to contractors. ASU GIS did six months of development for free.
The next meeting was scheduled for Thursday, April 17, 2003, at 1:30 p.m., at Arizona State Parks, Phoenix. [NB: This meeting was cancelled.]
The meeting was adjourned at 2:25 p.m.