The Nautical Archaeology Digital Library

Abstract

In Nautical Archaeology, the study of components and objects creates a complex environment for scholars and researchers. Nautical archaeologists access, manipulate, study, and consult a variety of sources from different media, geographical origins, ages, and languages. Representing underwater excavations is a challenging endeavor due to the large amount of information and data in heterogeneous media and sources that must be structured, segmented, categorized, indexed, and integrated. We are creating a Nautical Archaeology Digital Library that will a) efficiently catalog, store, and manage artifacts and ship remains along with associated information from underwater archeological excavations, b) integrate heterogeneous data sources in different media to facilitate research work, c) incorporate historic sources to help in the study of current artifacts, d) provide visualization tools to help researchers manipulate, observe, study, and analyze artifacts and their relationships; and e) incorporate algorithm and visualization based mechanisms for ship reconstruction.