Eric Kansa: Champion of Change

Eric Kansa (UC Berkeley School of Information) has been honored with an “Open Science” Champions of Change Award (http://www.whitehouse.gov/champions). On June 20, Eric attended the White House, which hosted a Champions of Change event to highlight “outstanding individuals, organizations, or research projects promoting and using open scientific data and publications to accelerate progress and improve our world. “

Learn more about “Indiana Jones and the Dungeon of Lost Data.”

Eric leads technology development for Open Context, a free, open access resource for the Web publication of primary field research from archaeology and related disciplines. It made its debut in 2006 as a means for scholars and students to easily find and reuse content created by others – key to advancing research and education. Open Context’s technologies focus on ease of use, open licensing frameworks, data integration and, most importantly, data portability.

Open Context is maintained and administered through the Alexandria Archive Institute, a not-for-profit organization. The AAI staff coordinates collaboration with the California Digital Library (CDL) to integrate CDL digital preservation and curation services in Open Context’s publication workflows.

A local (SF Bay Area) profile of Eric appears in The Alamedan.

Congratulations, Eric, on this well-deserved honor and on advocating for the usage of free access to research-generated data.