Online Cultural Heritage Research Environment

OCHRE

Joining OCHRE

Coming soon—not yet operational.

OCHRE is an online database service provided by the University of Chicago. This service is available to anyone who wishes to use it for a legitimate academic purpose.

Projects

All OCHRE data is organized according to projects. Users can view and search data that various academic projects have entered into the database and have made available for public use. A project can specify which of its data, if any, will be visible to users who are not members of the project. OCHRE can therefore be used as a private project database or as a means of publication, or both.

Fees

No payment is necessary to use OCHRE to view and search data that has been made public by participating projects. But in order to add or modify data in the OCHRE database, a fee must be paid by the project, which then receives a “project administrator” account that controls data entry for that project. The fee is necessary to cover the operating costs of the database server and the costs of maintaining and enhancing the OCHRE software. The amount of the fee is in proportion to the size of the project, as measured by the number of researchers who are actively involved in the project (excluding student assistants). The current fee is $X,XXX per researcher, with an annual renewal fee of $XXX per researcher after the first year. The fee for a student project (e.g., a doctoral dissertation) is $XXX, with an annual renewal fee of $XXX after the first year.

Control of Data

There is no requirement to keep paying the project renewal fee indefinitely. When a project stops paying, it will no longer be able to add or modify data, but all of the data it has entered into the OCHRE database will still be available for viewing and querying by project personnel—and by other OCHRE users, to the extent that the project has made its data public. Moreover, a project may export its data from the central database at any time for storage elsewhere or for use with other software. Each project therefore retains control of its data at all times, even after it stops paying the renewal fee. And, of course, if a project needs to do additional data entry at a later date, it may do so by resuming its fee payments.

Each participating project enters into an agreement that spells out the University of Chicago’s responsibilities for providing reliable online access to the OCHRE database and for preserving the project’s data. In return for their fees, participating projects receive a long-term data storage and archiving service. They also receive the opportunity to publish their data via OCHRE and to integrate it with data from other projects.

Technical Support

Basic technical support is provided by the OCHRE staff at the University of Chicago and is included in the project fee. Advanced technical support, including conversion of existing data files to the OCHRE format, is available for an additional fee.

[Last revised on February 27, 2006.]

 

University of

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