| Present: Prof A Harding (Chairman), Dr D Barrett (ALGAO), Dr R Bland (Portable Antiquities Scheme), Mr N Clubb (English Heritage), Mr D Dawson (Resource), Ms K Fernie (HEIRNET), Dr M Heyworth (CBA - minutes), Mr A Johnson (Manx National Heritage), Mrs C Longworth (Society of Museum Archaeologists), Mrs D Murray (RCAHMS), Dr J Richards (ADS) & Mr I Shepherd (ARIA). | |
| Apologies for absence were received from Mr P Ashmore (Historic Scotland), Mr P Badcock (IHBC), Mr D Baker (CBA), Dr G Chitty, Ms L Fiddes (Cadw) & Ms H Malaws (RCAHMW). | |
| Prof Harding welcomed everyone to the meeting, particularly Mr Johnson and Mrs Longworth who were both attending their first meeting of HEIRNET. He also introduced Ms Kate Fernie who was now working on behalf of HEIRNET, on secondment from English Heritage. | |
| 1 | Minutes of the sixth meeting, held on 28 November 2000 in York |
| The minutes were AGREED as an accurate record of the meeting. | |
| 2 | Update on Scottish issues |
| Mrs Murray reported that, following a review of national public bodies in
Scotland, the Scottish Royal Commission was to remain an independent organisation
with its remit unchanged. A proposal to change its status, possibly to a registered
charity, was under review, but the status quo was unlikely to change in the short term.
Mr Dawson reported that the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network has recently announced that it would receive financial support from the Scottish Executive to license the use of its resources in schools in Scotland. Mr Shepherd reported that following a recent meeting of ARIA it had been agreed that ARIA would become a Scottish group within ALGAO and would cease to exist as an independent body within two years. |
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| 3 | Update on English issues |
| Mr Clubb reported the Government's statement on the historic environment, following on from the English Heritage facilitated document Power of Place, was now due to be published on 13 December 2001. The identity of the new Chief Executive of English Heritage would be announced in the next few days and it was likely that the appointment would lead to further restructuring within the organisation. English Heritage was also currently undergoing a quinquennial review by DCMS. | |
| 4 | HEIRNET staffing |
| Dr Heyworth reported that Ms Kate Fernie had been seconded from English Heritage to
work for HEIRNET for three days a week for a year from October 2001, with supporting
funding from the ADS and Welsh and Scottish Royal Commissions. Her key tasks were to
develop the Register of HEIRs and Technical Advisory Service, and encourage
interoperability between HEIRs.
Prof Harding thanked the sponsoring bodies for their support for this very welcome initiative. |
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| 5 | HEIRNET Officer activity report |
| Ms Fernie reported on the work she had been doing on communication and publicity
in relation to the various HEIRNET initiatives, including articles written for publication
in the 2002 IFA Directory, Scottish Archaeological News, and the ADS Newsletter. She
had focussed on public access to resources that were available through the HEIRNET
interfaces, concentrating on the people using the resources and the resources themselves,
using a limited number of case studies.
Although there had been little feedback on the HEIRNET initiatives from users, and the Register of HEIRs had been little used to date, she hoped that the various publicity initiatives would encourage greater use and feedback in the coming months. It was AGREED that it would be helpful if HEIRNET members could publicise the various initiatives in their own publications and add links from their web sites. Other contributions to the 2002 IFA Directory could usefully draw attention to the wide support for HEIRNET. |
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| 6 | HEIRNET session at IFA 2001 conference |
| Dr Heyworth reported that the session at the IFA conference in April 2001 had gone well, although it not been particularly well attended. It had been particularly useful for a leading representative of the National Biodiversity Network to attend to show how they were taking forward similar initiatives. | |
| 7 | Register of HEIRs |
| Ms Fernie reported that the Register had had limited use to date, but she was taking
forward a programme of content development, starting with SMRs, MIDAS registered
inventories, and resources catalogued by ADS for HUMBUL. To date there had been three
attempts to self register HEIRs. There was a clear need to promote the Register, through
links from other web sites, giving it a higher profile in written articles and other
publicity, and by making it an interoperable z target in its own right.
Ms Fernie suggested that further thought needed to be given to the definition of an HEIR to give more guidance on what was appropriate to include within the Register. She suggested that the purpose of the Register was to enable public access to HEIRs, help information managers to plan the development of new resources, enable access to technical advice, and act as part of a network of interoperable cultural heritage registers. Following on from this an HEIR should be defined as an information resource about the historic environment, whether it was held on computer or not. Archaeological inventories, conservation management databases and research project databases would certainly fall within this definition, but there were grey areas as to whether to include other collections of information, for example directories of archaeological organisations. Related resources, such as content standards, terminology lists and registers of service providers could be added to the Register, but might be more appropriately considered to be part of the Technical Advisory Service. Ms Fernie also raised the issue of how to recognise the different life stages of HEIRs within the Register. It would be important for users to be able to see whether an HEIR was being planned, starting up, ongoing or completed. Mrs Murray recommended that the definition of an HEIR should be very broad in scope as it was better to be inclusive, although it would be necessary to prioritise effort in cataloguing new HEIRs for inclusion in the Register. She did not believe that it would be a problem if the contents of the Register were initially rather eclectic. Mr Clubb agreed, but suggested that different categories of HEIRs could be defined and labelled as such within the Register. Dr Bland suggested that users' views should be given priority and he thought that most users would want broad access to information resources. Mrs Murray also suggested that it would be important to keep references to older resources within the Register, even if the information had since been amalgamated into other resources, as part of the need to avoid duplication of effort. Prof Harding suggested that Ms Fernie should draw up a list of categories of resources to be included, and rank them in a suggested priority order for addition to the Register. This could then be circulated to HEIRNET members for comment and approval. In devising the prioritisation she should start with what were clearly core resources such as SMRs. This was AGREED. Dr Richards proposed that a small working informal working group of the ADS and the NMRs could be used to make decisions on specific resources as the need arose. This was AGREED. |
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| 8 | HEIRPORT web portal |
| Dr Richards reported that a historic environment z39.50 portal was under development.
The ADS was taking the lead in the technical development, with initial resources to be
included being the ADS catalogue, CANMORE (the online version of the Scottish National
Monuments Record), the portable antiquities database and the SCRAN database. It was hoped
to add further resources in due course, such as the HEIRNET Register of HEIRs.
The portal was to be formally launched on 23 January 2002 at the British Museum as part of an event organised by the British Archaeological Awards. He suggested that it would be appropriate for the portal to be badged as an HEIRNET initiative. This was AGREED. Dr Heyworth noted that all HEIRNET members would be receiving an invitation to the launch which would take place in the early evening. |
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| 9 | Technical Advisory Service |
| Ms Fernie reported that she had taken a very pragmatic approach to the development
of the proposed service by developing a simple web page with details of relevant
information resources, sources of advice, and details of key organisations. She
suggested that further discussion was needed on how the service might develop,
particularly with the need for a more human point of contact.
Mr Dawson noted that Resource funded the mda and UKOLN to provide advice within its sectors, but that strictly speaking this did not cover archaeology outside of the museum sector. There were relevant services within the higher education sector, such as TASI, but again these were largely sector specific. Dr Richards commented that the ADS was also asked to give technical advice but that strictly speaking this was limited to the HE and FE sectors. In practice it was usually possible to help with queries from all sectors, but this would not necessarily be sustainable if telephone calls and visits were involved. Mrs Murray pointed out that the full development of an HEIRNET Technical Advisory Service would require considerable extra funding. She also noted that at present there was no sense of the potential user group for such a service. Dr Heyworth thought that the simple web page was a useful starting point, especially for new projects that might be starting up with support from the HLF or the Local Heritage Initiative, although it would need further promotion to ensure that people knew where to find it. He agreed that further work was needed to follow on from the original HEIRNET report to look into the use of HEIRs. |
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| 10 | Project to analyse current use of HEIRs and identify future development needs |
| Dr Heyworth suggested that following the original identification of the importance
of user needs as the key driver in the development of HEIRs there was a need for further
work to identify patterns of usage and user profiles for current HEIRs to inform future
developments. This could be taken forward by a further research project undertaken under
the auspices of HEIRNET as it would collect together important information that would be
beneficial to all HEIRNET members.
Mr Clubb proposed that a small scoping exercise should be undertaken initially, to identify and trawl through existing relevant sources of information and to scope a larger project, which might involve major user surveys, possibly conducted by an organisation like MORI. Dr Bland suggested that the HLF might be interested in funding a study of this type. Several useful sources of information were suggested, including museum surveys sponsored by Resource, some of the original thinking behind Culture Online, the MORI survey that was undertaken as part of the Power of Place survey, and SMR surveys. It was AGREED that Dr Heyworth, Dr Richards and Ms Fernie should draw up a specification for the initial scoping work and circulate it to HEIRNET members by email for comment. Mr Dawson and Mr Clubb both suggested that they might be able to assist with the funding of this project. |
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| 11 | Forum for Network Co-ordination |
| Dr Heyworth reported that, as members had been notified by email, HEIRNET had been
invited to take part in the Forum for Network Co-ordination, which was organised by
Resource and JISC. Mr Baker had attended earlier meetings and Ms Fernie had attended
the most recent meeting.
The Forum was proposing to agree a concordat, and an earlier draft had been circulated to HEIRNET members for comment, although the revised draft was not yet available. Dr Heyworth promised to keep HEIRNET members in touch with the Forum and would ensure that the revised concordat was circulated by email for approval before HEIRNET could agree to add its name. It was likely to be a very general document which would be unlikely to be controversial. Mr Dawson suggested that the Forum was a useful grouping, although its coverage was very broad. It was part of ongoing networking initiatives within Resource which now included links with European partners in the cultural sector who were beginning work on an HEIRNET-style register of cultural resources across Europe. |
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| 12 | Culture Online |
| Mr Dawson reported that the DCMS Secretary of State had said in her speech at the Museums Association conference that she would be in a position to make an announcement about Culture Online in the near future. | |
| 13 | BBC History Learning Journeys |
| Mr Dawson reported that he had been meeting with staff from the BBC History department who were developing a series of learning journeys, to be delivered online. These would include a journey on how to do archaeology', with Julian Richards, which should be released in April 2002 following user testing. Mr Dawson promised to keep HEIRNET members in touch with this initiative as it developed, and to pass information about HEIRNET to the BBC | |
| 14 | Legacy datasets |
| Mr Clubb reported that English Heritage had identified that it had a problem with some legacy datasets and planned to organise a seminar in February or March 2002 to share the thinking behind its approach to this problem. He hoped that many HEIRNET members would be invited to participate. | |
| 15 | Date of next meeting |
| It was AGREED that Dr Heyworth would attempt to convene a meeting of HEIRNET at the 2002 IFA conference which was to be held at the University of Leicester from 25-27 March 2002, if a convenient slot could be identified in the programme, perhaps in the early evening. | |
Document last revised: 07 December 2001 by