The Discovery Programme is an archaeological research institution dedicated to investigating Irelands past from earliest times and presenting the results to as wide an audience as possible. The Discovery Programme community totals fifteen people and includes archaeologists, historians, environmental archaeologists, surveyors and IT specialists.

The interests of the Discovery Programme include Archaeology, Irish History, Palaeo-environmentalism, General Irish Heritage, Archaeological Survey. The Discovery Programme staff are highly motivated towards contributing content to the explorer.ie CH forum. Access to rapid information dissemination facilities would allow them to publish ongoing research findings.

The first stage of trials conducted with The Discovery Programme staff consisted of a series of round table discussions. The main points of interest raised during the discussions were the constructed monument and artefact ontologies, and how they best reflected the CH domain.

The second stage of trials involved the examination of archaeological narratives and the methodology one would use to create this narrative. This also allowed the creation of a narrative workflow structure to enable the DIT programmers to implement a web based narrative tool.

The third stage involved the testing of the DIT explorer.ie narrative tool. The Discovery Programme staff evaluated this digital process of narrative creation compared to the CH narrative process developed in stage two of these trials.

A narrative wizard was created for use within the explorer.ie narrative tool. It allowed Discovery Programme staff to easily publish and index archaeological lessons.

• The staff thought that the process was easy to follow, however, for first time users more instruction was needed.
• Staff also thought that the creation of a long lesson was too complex and the narrative tool should allow the user to create smaller lesson narratives, which in turn would be linked to several other lessons within a themed lesson. Staff gave the analogy of chapters in a book being like a lesson and a complete book being the themed lesson.

Contact: Anthony Corns (anthony@discoveryprogramme.ie)