AZSITE Quarterly Meeting

Arizona State Museum

The University of Arizona

Minutes

January 12, 2004

 

Present:

Carol Griffith, SHPO

Rick Karl, ASM

Beth Grindell, ASM, recording

David Wilcox, MNA

Vince Schiavitti, SHPO

Teresa Serrano, ASM

Laural Myer, Aztlan

Su Benaron, ASM

 

The meeting was called to order at 1:40 p.m. by Carol Griffith.

 

Old Business:

  1. Grants:  There are no current grants.  We are investigating the option of a Heritage fund grant this year for some records filming.  Griffith reported that BLM has been providing $20-25,000 per year under a programmatic agreement and we have been making it available to the ASU GIS office and will do so again this year.
  2. Data management: 
    1. Karl reported on the October User Group meeting that reviewed recent modifications to AZMAP and planned new modifications.  The recommendations made at that meeting are being implemented and coming on-line now.  They include:

                                                               i.      A new extended Help Menu. 

                                                             ii.      The maps will now print in a landscape format and what you see on the screen is what will print. 

                                                            iii.      The “export to Excell” function has been improved and it is now also possible to export to a delimited text format. 

                                                           iv.      The sites attribute page has been linked to the map so that you do not have to log into separate pages. 

                                                             v.      The zoom level at which you can turn on site boundaries has been changed from 4 sq. miles to 8 sq. miles, so it will be possible to turn on site boundaries at a smaller resolution. 

                                                           vi.      A function that will allow searches by site name or partial site name is also available.  The center point UTMs and TRS are also visible on the attributes page.

    1. Karl reported that the 7.5’ map application is now working but has not yet been taken ‘live.’  That will happen when the server moves to CES, where the ASU GIS application is moving, in a new arrangement at ASU.
    2. Tribal data.  ASM is still removing tribal data and clipping data that is within or intersects with tribal boundaries.  Where site boundaries intersect the boundary, that portion that falls outside the tribal boundary will be left in the database.
    3. Karl reported on the numbering of linear resources:  Lots of work has been done to consolidate transcontinental railroad line numbers.  When deciding which of the several assigned numbers to use, ASM looks to see which was assigned first, which segment has the most numbers and makes a decision.  All numbers are still searchable but the records will all point to the main assigned number, only the portion within tribal land is clipped out. 
    4. Site updates and corrections required by users:  The AZSITE user agreement requires that users who do field recording must let us know, through data submission, that they have revisited a site and provide corrected information, as necessary. 
  1. SHPO report:  Carol Griffith emphasized that AZSITE is the state inventory and SHPO uses it.  When archaeologists check data at SHPO, they are looking at AZSITE data.   It may be necessary to check SHPO paper records, and in some cases ASM records.  Karl further explained that AZSITE is not the same as ASM’s paper records.  There are lots of records from non-ASM institutions in AZSITE and ASM does not hold the paper records for those records.  Karl is in the process of preparing an updated list of which map quads are complete for which agency’s records.  For example, for the Tucson Quad, AZSITE is 100% complete for Tucson’s records. 

 

Public comment:

 

In response to a question from Myers, Griffith reported that SHPO has a backlog of about 6 years of data, and it is being added as fast as possible but it is difficult to estimate when SHPO data will be completely in AZSITE.  SHPO has had many reports scanned and those can be seen electronically at SHPO but it will be a while before those are available on the web site.  Some federal agencies may never allow the reports to be on-line, even in the controlled access AZSITE web site. 

 

Next meeting:  SHPO conference room, 1300 West Washington, Phoenix, April 21, 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 2:12 p.m.