Mapping Information Resources

Aims

1.1 The HEIRNET brief defined the deliverables for the consultancy as the production of a report which:

• identifies all the key information systems that relate to the UK's historic environment, providing details of their defined purpose, as well as their perceived role and functions;
• identifies aspects of the UK's historic environment which are not currently covered within existing information systems, or where existing information could be re-used for other purposes, eg education;
• identifies aspects of the UK's historic environment which are covered by more than one current information system and where economies of effort might be encouraged;
• suggests how information systems relating to the historic environment of the UK might develop, bearing in mind the need to enable access and enhance public benefit;
• articulates a 'strategic vision' for information systems that relate to the UK's historic environment.

Background

1.2 Existing information resources for the historic environment have developed through two principal groups of systems, for archaeology (sites and monuments records and national archaeological records and databases), and for the built historic environment (statutory designations, local lists and national building / monument records and databases). Recent moves towards integration at local and national level have generally not been matched by any forging of similar links with other information systems for related resources, such as the biological heritage, museum and archive collections, landscape and countryside management, and historic estate management. One characteristic of historic information systems has been their evolution within a framework of local, regional or national administrative units of environmental management, rather than in the context of the United Kingdom as a whole; another has been the parallel development of topic-based, often specialised, systems whose subjects have tended to mark out their own scopes.

1.3 The publication of PPG 15 in 1994 marked the formal reception of the concept of environmental stewardship - first signalled in This Common Inheritance (1990) - in public policy for the heritage. Government guidance (DNH, August 1995) has advocated the development of integrated historic environment data bases and emphasised their potential contribution, not only to the planning process but also to state of the environment reports and as a valuable educational resource. New initiatives for conserving the countryside have shown the fundamental importance, not only of assessing landscape character, but also of an integrated approach which includes the natural, semi-natural and human-influenced attributes of the environment. An increasingly more inclusive understanding of 'historic environment' has brought with it recognition that knowledge and popular understanding - promoted by access and education - are the keys to democratic support for sustainable conservation practice. The statement from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport on the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review (1998) has identified the need for future initiatives which promote 'access for many not just the few', the 'pursuit of excellence and innovation', and 'the nurturing of educational opportunity'.

Approach

1.4 In the context of all these recent developments, strategic reviews and 'mapping' projects for aspects of historical conservation need to be more than self-contained exercises within the worlds of conservation or archaeology, or within national or local levels only. They must look beyond the artificial boundaries between disciplines and identify potential connections with adjacent fields of activity. At a practical level, past experience has shown that top-down solutions which attempt to impose a co-ordinating structure on a plethora of existing databases and information systems can be unwelcome and unworkable. For these reasons, the approach of this project has sought be inclusive and broad-based, running with the grain of evolving public policy generally, as well as for the historic environment. It has tried to address the issue of devising frameworks within which existing and future elements can operate and co-operate most effectively across the broad environmental sector. This is an essential prerequisite for promoting public access and educational opportunity, while also taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by continuing innovation in information technology.

1.5 Though the first stage of this project was the modelling of an operational framework for information systems dealing with the historic environment, it was not the intention to produce an ideal structure within which HEIRs should fit. Rather, the operational framework seeks to delineate the overall environment within which HEIRs already exist, describe its existing operation, and outline its potential scope by suggesting ways of achieving more efficient and dynamic interaction between related information resources and users. In this way, by keeping the major factors and their inter-relationships under consideration, it points the way forward in two important directions, towards effective joint working and towards recognising the potentialfor cross-domain discovery which networked digital resources are now beginning to offer.

Scope

1.6 It follows from the approach outlined above that developing the model framework was in effect a scoping exercise. This aided the definition of a core area of operation for historic environment information systems and the range of potential interaction with related sectors. As well as members of the HEIRNET forum, it was necessary to consult representatives of other national agencies and bodies concerned with managing archives and historical information dealing with biodiversity, biological heritage, countryside, educational resources, historic estates, rivers and coast lines.

Methods Statement

1.7 The project has worked through four stages; the satisfactory outcomes of each required active participation from the interests represented in HEIRNET to ensure that every identifiable aspect of this exponentially expanding field was appropriately considered.

Stage 1: Design

A model of the operational framework for information systems dealing with the historic environment was prepared. Outputs from this scoping exercise were both theoretical (e.g. providing an understanding of the dynamics of information flow) and practical (e.g. producing a listing of HEIRs which potentially come within the scope of the consultancy). The views of members of the HEIRNET forum were an essential part of the scoping process, focussed through discussion with them of their responses to the Aims for the project.

The framework was modelled around a set of four simplified and interconnected subjects and related activities which characterise the consultancy's subject area. This aided the definition of a core area of closely interdependent operations beyond which it was possible to chart a zone of more loosely interrelated and overlapping fields of environmental and information management. It also helped recognise that the world encounters the historic environment and its information from different functional perspectives, and that the extent to which the consequences are beneficial or harmful often depends upon the extent to which one element is aware of the existence and roles of others.

(a) the historic environment: its scope, extent, complexity, uses, and links with other environmental aspects (b) information management: theory, data, systems, uses, technical standards
(c) the conservation process: its sequence of stages, needs for skills and information, outputs and links to other activities
(d) organisational structures: their purposes, interconnections with other organisations, and resources

Stage 2: Data collection

Desk based survey was undertaken to gather summary statements on the scope, policy and practice of existing or actively developing HEIRs, and other related information resources or destinations outside the core area of the historic environment, as identified through Stage 1. The examination of existing systems was undertaken through the organisations responsible for them, or directly interested in them. Existing statements of roles, responsibilities, policy and practice, compiled from published or publicly available sources were used wherever possible.

Telephone / interview survey was undertaken of existing or actively developing HEIRs, and other related information sources or destinations outside the core area of historic environment management, as identified through Stage 1. Because the survey covered a large number of bodies individual visits and interviews were made, other than with HEIRNET members, only where other factors require a more extended appraisal.

Stage 3: Analysis and mapping

Existing information systems were analysed using Stage 2 desk-based and telephone survey data. Strengths and weaknesses were examined in relation to the model operational framework and patterns of information flow, in order to identify gaps, overlaps, opportunities for development and issues which remain to be resolved.

Stage 4: Assessment and review

Recommendations and proposals have been formulated to maximise and develop the capability of existing systems in the context of the model framework. Recommendations flowed from a comparison of the existing situation with the model framework. This comparison sought to take account of any critiques dealing with previous and existing attempts to manage information about the historic environment systematically and for public access and benefit.

1.8 The main report begins with an account of the descriptive mapping. The results are described in relation to each of the four elements of the framework in turn, identifying issues that arose from them individually or through interactions with other elements. This is supported by eight case studies dealing with particular aspects or topics. It continues by considering two major sets of issues affecting future development, the national-local interface and managed interoperability between systems. It concludes with a discussion reviewing the deliverables required by the brief and making some strategic recommendations.

2 Descriptive Map of HEIRs in the UK

2.1 During the early stages of analysing the data for this project attempts were made to produce a single definitive 'map' of the distribution and relationships of HEIRs in the UK. This process revealed that relationships are elaborately constructed and may be read along several axes of conservation activity, usage, and information management. In effect the 'map' is one of multiple linkages between different sectors of operation in the historic environment. Each has very diverse and changing user requirements for information and the 'map' is bespoke for each different area of usage. The complexity and the layering of the information landscape has been investigated in a series of individual case studies which chart particular interrelationships in different sectors of the field. These are presented in Section 3.

2.2 A characteristic of the age is that organisational structures are changing more rapidly, and tending to become more complex. Organisations participating in the various stages of the conservation process can operate in relation to any of five contexts - academic, cultural, economic, educational or social - and in relation to a range of spatial and chronological scales. Organisational territories range from the national to regional, to local authorities, parishes and neighbourhood communities.

2.3 One of the most significant linkages through the elaborate network of organisations concerned with the historic environment is the common need for access to information resources. Four broad groupings of bodies formed the basis for selective data gathering in the 'mapping' process, categorised by the ways in which their functions involve them in distinct ways with information systems for the historic environment.

(a) The core group of organisations managing key information systems for the historic environment are those who do so primarily as a service for others to use and whose activities include compiling material generated by themselves and by others (e.g. the Royal Commissions on Ancient and Historical Monuments). A related group within this core are those umbrella organisations concerned with standards, co-ordination and networking of information systems, independent of the specific needs of the historic environment (e.g. FISHEN, ADS, mda).

(b) Closely allied to the core are conservation organisations with primary operational functions other than managing information systems. They use and generate information as part of their activities in the conservation process and as part of their duties to manage historic environment resources (including properties and collections). They either have a direct user / contributor relationship with the core group systems or manage their own bespoke systems. Within this group of conservation organisations there are two sub-groups whose information systems are distinctly different in character and designed to operate at different scales. The first are historic environment conservation managing organisations, such as national heritage bodies, local authority historic environment services, National Parks, historic estate managers. The second group are historic collections and property managing organisations, e.g. for museum collections, including archaeological archives, historic places, cathedrals, churches, portable antiquities.

(c) A third and separate group of organisations, often independent of public authorities, are those which compile and manage information systems for specialist studies and research topics. These organisations generally have systems designed for their own research purposes but often have a user / contributor relationship with the above groups.

(d) The fourth category of HEIR organisations is that of secondary organisational users who derive HEIR information from systems managed by others. They influence opinion, policy and decision-making but without directly generating any feedback of fresh or revised information.

(e) Finally there is an important group of organisations which facilitate access to heritage information held by others. They do not necessarily create or hold information themselves and include archaeology Internet gateways, consortia for information exchange and networking, and EC programmes.

2.4 This project is principally concerned with the interaction between the first three categories of information managing organisation, and their potential relations with user and facilitator organisations. Large organisation with multiple roles commonly encompass more than one, or indeed most, of the categories of operational information system.

2.5 To present the 'map' in terms of these organisational categories alone however would have offered only one perspective on the current landscape of information management. The modelling exercise in the first stage of the project (Appendix 1) was designed to provide a more comprehensive framework for the analysis and mapping. The results of that process are presented here as a 'descriptive' map in sections corresponding to the elements of the operational model. The map integrates specific information from the data gathering process and from the case studies (Section 3) with the general understanding which this survey has begun to provide about connections between information resources for the historic environment, their scope, coverage and uses.

Historic Environment

2.6 The scope of 'historic environment information' adopted for the HEIRNET survey embraces several generations of (until recently) unrelated and separately developed information systems for the built, buried and landscape heritage. Public policy since the 1980s has tended to encourage the merger and integration of these systems. It has become particularly relevant in relation to post-Rio notions of sustainable development which have adopted holistic approaches and engaged local perceptions of value and significance inclusive of cultural and natural attributes. This has happened most effectively within organisations B whether public service or commercial B which have a role in managing the full range of environmental issues in their business area, rather than one particular aspect. Examples of broad-based integrated historic environment information holdings include numbers of local authority environment departments, some regional water companies and environment agency offices, and national bodies such as the Forestry Commission.

2.7 Within the area of historic cultural resources, the boundaries are still in need of significant reworking to create unified systems for archaeology, historic landscape and historic buildings. In museums collection management, information systems still operate largely independently except where collections are directly associated with a particular location and information is managed in that specific context (i.e. at a site museum such as Ironbridge or linked to field information in an NMR or SMR). Separate local and national hierarchies of information system also operate for historical archives and records.

2.8 Differences in perception about the relevance and usefulness of information in different sectors have resulted in an unevenness in practices of documentation and information management. In archaeological recording, where the process of excavation and recording has always been contingent on part or total loss of the resource itself, there is a strong impetus to regard the gathering of information and its subsequent availability as an end in itself. In building conservation the primary aim has more often been the preservation of the historic resource itself. The concept of preserving the building itself as the primary 'text' has a long pedigree and in the past the need for action to document alterations to fabric has been viewed as unjustified, even where significant changes were involved. In museum practice, as is the case in archive and record management, documentation is designed to aid research and use of the primary material, and information resources facilitate but do not replace the user's interaction with the collections.

2.9 Significant partitioning still exists between information systems designed to deal with the conservation of historic cultural resources (archaeology, artefact collections, historic structures and buildings) and the biological heritage. It is usual that local and national information systems for biodiversity and nature conservation are operated separately. Uneven, and sometimes only superficial, progress has been made towards achieving the model for integrated resource inventories which was advocated in Government guidance to new authorities on Local Government Reorganisation in 1995 as 'the baseline for monitoring related environmental change'. The planned National Biodiversity Network is potentially one of the largest and most ambitious proposals for information management in the environmental sector and will include developing information standards and metadata for biological heritage information in local record centres across Great Britain, linking them with national information systems for habitat and statutory designation. Strategic planning of information management on this scale, with all the issues over IPR which arise, is possible partly because of the relative under development (compared with the historic environment) of existing local record systems for nature conservation, but it offers a model for developing controlled interoperability between diverse and distributed information resources on which the historic environment sector might usefully draw.

2.10 The development of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has facilitated integrated and cross-sector working with historic environment information by allowing mapped data for nature conservation, land cover, geology, soils and other 'green' environmental information, hitherto managed separately, to be viewed in conjunction with the more traditionally recognised elements of the cultural landscape. Effectively a GIS presents an interface, and facilitates potential linkages, between multiple databases. A good example of its application is in the field of historic landscape assessment where the full spectrum of historic environment attributes, including the characterisation of urban and rural settlement landscapes, is being brought together flexibly and comprehensively. As a model, the strength of the geographical approach lies in the capacity for an infinite number of information sets to be linked in different combinations as required for particular, or for future unknown, uses. All major national agencies concerned with the historic environment are moving towards, or have already migrated to, this type of information management and many local authorities have maintained GIS for some years.

2.11 Place, or, in information terms, spatial data, has emerged as the unifying factor in new information development for the historic environment and defines the point and scale of entry for users, whether the place is a country, a region, a local authority, a town, a parish, a landscape, a habitat, a building, or the location of a findspot. Physical information about location has become as important as logical information about historical objects in order to advance understanding and the conservation process.

ISSUES emerging from the mapping of existing historic environment information resources include:

Coverage

• There is uneven and patchy coverage in certain topic areas. There are, for example, well developed local and regional specialist systems, such as those for ceramics and artefact series (e.g. Bedfordshire County Ceramics type series and Artefacts typology) or industrial archaeology (e.g. Mills Research Group), in specific topic and geographical areas but these lack a national framework and guidance for data collection and standards and are weakened by incomplete coverage.
• Consistency of coverage for different aspects of the historic environment is lacking. Generally, archaeological and museums collection data have been privileged (more data collection, to agreed common standards, and with better access) while built and landscape environment aspects have been less well documented and information is less accessible (e.g. historic hedgerows, vernacular buildings).
• Single subject corpora for defined regional, national or supra-national areas, maintained to consistent academic and information standards within stable institutional contexts (e.g. ASPROM, CBA Petrology Index) are a rare reference resource.
• Few historic environment information resources offer UK-wide coverage. Research projects or resource managers which extend across Great Britain (e.g. the Rock Art project, the Forestry Commission), or projects which seek to relate UK data with that of other European partner countries, must at present access multiple national data sets compiled to different standards and structures.
• Limited or non-availability of heritage information spatial data formats from local and national systems (especially core datasets for local and national designations, such as Conservation Areas, Local Plan designated heritage sites, Registered parks and gardens) is a significant obstacle to the compilation of integrated environmental management systems at any level from local to UK wide operations.

Duplication

• Multiple recording of different attributes or levels of information about the same 'object' within several systems is common (e.g. artefact finds in Portable Antiquities Database, Museum collections management systems, and SMRs; e.g. buildings at risk in SAVE, Pavilions of Splendour, local authority and national registers for Buildings At Risk).
• There are overlaps between SMRs, statutory Lists, structural SAMs, Conservation Areas and Registered Parks and Gardens, Buildings-at-Risk Registers (national and local) - all are separate systems holding the same or similar data for different management purposes: there is no concept of 'core' data to which layers of management or specialist information can be added.
• Bibliographic and reference information is neither held in standard forms nor drawn from standard sources where these exist.
• There is poor awareness of other information resources or how to access remotely and consequent duplication of effort in local data collection.
• There are low confidence levels in the quality of data from other systems so there is repeat data collection to ensure currency of field information and validate other data.
• For research projects which require access to multiple information systems in order to compile strategic studies or corpora (e.g. Wetland Surveys, MARS, Rock Art pilot), there can be significant problems identifying the extent of duplication where it is masked by variability of levels and standards of information.

Conservation Process

2.12 The activities of the conservation process have been described as a self-sustaining cycle of awareness, management and feedback into improved understanding and awareness (Appendix I). The context for these activities can be divided into a series of areas of usage of the historic environment within which certain types of activity, and therefore information requirement, are prevalent: academic, cultural, economic, educational, and social. Before attempting to chart the information resources that are developing in relation to these different uses, it is important to describe the framework of core conservation information systems which compile and maintain the resources of data on which most operational information systems draw to a greater or lesser degree. The quality of the resources of these systems and agreement on data standards between them are fundamental for future prospects.

2.13 The strategic centres in the information landscape for the historic environment are the record centres of the national and local bodies responsible for historic environment information - NMRs, statutory datasets, SMRs and Local Environment Information Management Systems (LEIMS). A related group are the operational information systems of large historic estate managers (for example, the Historic Properties Groups of the national heritage agencies, the National Trust, Historic Royal Palaces, British Waterways, Defence Estates) which operate on a national scale but at the local level in terms of management. These, like the principal local information centres in Local Government and National Parks, have a dual role in environmental and information management at the local level. National heritage agencies share this dual role only for those places designated or recognised as of special archaeological or historical significance in the national picture. Discussion of national-local interfaces (Section 5) shows that the traditional hierarchies of information management for local and national systems are no longer as relevant although a distinct role for separate systems can still be delineated.

2.14 Other specialist information systems have developed to serve specific uses which may draw on, and theoretically feed back into, local and national conservation information systems. Examples are as diverse as the Portable Antiquities Database, the Defence of Britain project, the National Inventory of War memorials, the Rock Art project, environmental databases for major land managing business, thematic databases compiled as the basis for selection for statutory designation, research-based regional programmes such at the Wetlands Surveys. The contexts for such specialist systems in the conservation process are discussed below but in general this study has identified a number of issues.

2.15 Feedback from these specialised information resources is being achieved systematically more successfully in local conservation management information systems than in national ones. There is a perception that information is most 'usefully' placed in local systems because this is usually the point from which conservation management is delivered and where the information can most conveniently be validated and updated in the future. However, the dispersal of 'parent' datasets among distributed local information systems is perceived as having several disadvantages. These include the reduction of the information's future conservation value (as a consequence of loss of regional, national and strategic overviews of the resource), weakening of the justification to maintain the 'parent' system as a research resource, and data corruption due to the inconsistency of data standards and structures in receiving bodies.

Other identified ISSUES include:

• There is little or no systematic shared use of national heritage conservation systems with local information systems. The computerised Listed Building Record for England, for example, has a large number of potential conservation users in local and other national bodies, such as amenity societies, but direct access to the central digital version of this resource is extremely limited.
• Generally there is also very limited access to the underlying data which supports published summaries of national heritage conservation data sets - for example, in relation to registered or scheduled sites and owned historic properties - despite the fact that this compiled at a level of detail relevant for local management.
• There is a lack of an'enhancement loop' between specialist and generalist systems. The scope for systematic enhancement of the second by the first has not been realised because of uncertainties and tensions, for example, over data quality and standards, appropriate channels for dissemination, and the 'professionalisation' of data management.
• Many of the outcomes from national reviews and assessments which provide the context for selective statutory designation are valuable information resources in their own right and could provide a resource for the conservation and research community as served digital resources (for example, as with English Heritage's monument class descriptions).

Academic Uses

2.16 Since an understanding of the historic environment is both the goal of academic research and the prerequisite of sound conservation practice, there ought in theory to be only an artificial distinction between information compiled for the purposes of academic research and information compiled for the purpose, and as an output, of conservation activities. The conservation process is by far the largest producer of new historic environment information but the academic sector is a major user, often complaining, sometimes justifiably, that the material is not suitable for use. Yet academic resources in information management are providing the co-ordination and resource discovery networks which information in the heritage conservation sector has lacked, for example through the Arts and Humanities Data Service and the UK-wide Research Support Libraries Programme (see section 3.1).

2.17 The datasets on which these networks will draw to compile their catalogues exist in the National Monuments Records, in SMRs and LEIMS, in information systems for the management of statutorily protected historic places, in projects commissioned by the national heritage agencies (e.g. AIP), led by the Council for British Archaeology (e.g. BIAB), and carried out by archaeological and architectural practices. There are significant difficulties in achieving satisfactory coverage and linkages among these numerous information resources for academic purposes.

Identified ISSUES include:

• Weaknesses in the information flows which should feed the outputs of conservation action, (e.g. development-led excavation projects; national assessments for listing and scheduling) into accessible information systems available for new research.
• Under-developed linkages between the knowledge derived from fresh academic enquiry and innovative conservation practice, e.g. too few research programmes are integrated with current conservation questions and objectives and too few conservation programmes are actively informed by new research. Links are also weak between teaching programmes and current field practice and conservation questions, e.g. student dissertations and placements based on 'real world' field data and casework.
• Identified but uncoordinated potential for specialist research centres and groups to improve data standards by developing technical vocabulary and thesauri for their specialist areas.
• Potential for a unified bibliographic / grey literature/ field event index. A continuously updated reference system, could provide a uniquely valuable electronic resource not just for the academic but for all users in the sector. Components of this exist in a series of currently separate information systems (BIAB, AIP, NMR excavations index).
• Increasing distances between the different knowledge areas used in support of archaeology, causing problems for the non-specialist in linking data from diverse resources.

Cultural / Educational Uses

2.18 Social and cultural inclusion, together witha strong impetus for increased educational opportunity are large planks in current Government policies. A significant reorientation has therefore been required from many heritage information systems which were established in the 1980s and early 1990s and are the products of data collection initiatives geared primarily to informing environmental management policies. Neither the design of these systems, nor the technology available at the time, fits them for broader uses without considerable redesign and reinvestment. Museums, and organisations with cultural and educational information systems oriented for more general public uses, have evolved more readily to meet growing user needs in this area, viz the Netful of Jewels report. Internet-based resources such as the 24-hour museum, SCRAN, and Images of England, the education pages of, for example, the CBA, English Heritage, Historic Scotland, the NMRs, the National Trust, provide an entry point at the national level into cultural and educational resources. At a regional or local scale direct access to digital information resources is scarce or non-existent. Most user information needs in this area are met through education or public relations staff and supplied through conventionally produced teaching and information literature and audio-visual aids.

Identified ISSUES include the fact that:

• Many national and local historic environment information systems - particularly those related to statutory and local authority functions - have not been designed for this type of usage although they may provide valuable raw material for re-presentation in cultural or educational contexts (e.g. the Listed Building System data being utilised in the Images of England project).
• Successful information initiatives for the broad educational market are involving major investment (examples are SCRAN and, again, Images of England) and models for low cost, small scale Internet-based resources aimed at users in this area are only just beginning to be developed. Resources for recasting, or creating, digital resources to mediate and present the historic environment intelligibly are scarce.
• Software for accessing data, remotely and locally, is often unfriendly for users which obstructs the potential broad-based usage of this information for education.
• Software for collecting data is similarly off-putting and limited use has been made of digital records by those compiling archaeological and historical information in the voluntary, independent and education sectors, leading to duplication, wasted effort and separatism. The Local Heritage Initiative may confirm or illuminate some preconceptions in this area.
• The redesign of information systems for operational purposes or technical upgrading is not always taking the opportunity to restructure data in ways which can be utilised flexibly to serve the needs of general interest and educational users and offer links to help build the national / regional/ local networks.
• A decentralised framework of information systems in the future may present difficulties for the non-specialist to navigate or understand. Integrative and explanatory tools will be required as gateways to other information resources.
• Uncoordinated funding strategies, for example through the HLF, DCMS and DETR, have not taken full advantage of potential synergies between national and local information systems (e.g. Portable Antiquities Recording scheme, the Defence of Britain project, the Local Heritage Initiative).

Economic / Social Uses

2.19 The historic environment is a substantial economic and social resource, although until relatively recently this aspect has not been recognised as readily as its value in educational and cultural contexts. Again it is the new orthodoxies of sustainable working that have legitimised 'heritage', not just as a commodity for tourism and the leisure industry but as a central element in the process of regeneration of places and communities, bringing opportunities for adaptive re-use, adding value, new employment, recycling of material, revitalisation. The same reorientation of ideas has fostered, at the local scale of community and neighbourhood, the value of a sense of historical identity and place which has become one of the cornerstones of development policies and plans in the late 1990s. This being the case, the supply of usable, intelligible information is a fundamental requirement on the one hand to those in the private sector, who are integral to financing and implementing successful economic development and, on the other hand, for ready access by communities themselves to the information they need to influence changes in their locality.

2.20 For property managing bodies which have inherited or acquired extensive estates with a high degree of historic interest, access to detailed information is an essential requirement first and foremost for internal management purposes. Their information systems, often based on data derived in the first instance from publicly available 'heritage datasets', may be enhanced by them with detailed information which for commercial or other reasons is confidential and which has an economic value in itself. Intellectual property rights and confidentiality are definite issues while public access may not be a primary concern.

Identified ISSUES in this area include:

• Historic property organisations manage the conservation of their estates first and foremost as economic assets. Information compiled primarily for these purposes will not justify enhancement for wider usage, unless the estate in question has a separate but equally strong function in the cultural / educational sphere, such as the National Trust has or the Church Heritage Record envisages. Such systems are moving only slowly towards broader information access with an awareness that wider knowledge means more physical access to land and properties which may be vulnerable, and unsuited or unsafe for general public use.
• Existing heritage data have undeveloped potential uses for social and economic purposes which could be explored through commercial organisations for the property, development and tourism markets, e.g. buildings-at-risk registers; grant aided properties and projects where public access is a condition of funding; directories of craft and historic building specialist suppliers and businesses; accredited archaeology, architecture and surveying practices.
• IPR remains an issue for many information holding bodies, particularly if the commercial potential of information access is recognised. Jointly agreed protocols and structures for controlling and administering rights will need to be developed.
• Accessible and intelligible information for the 'local' user about the historic environment is not available consistently in the right places or in the right form to be utilised for general social projects; the natural home for information gathered by local groups for local purposes remains the nearest library (and accordingly the Local Heritage Initiative has proposed development of a new digital archive for its national programme of local projects).

Information Management

2.21 Information about the historic environment is a vital element in the conservation process. Its effective management for multiple uses by organisations and individuals is fundamental to the cycle of inputs and outputs in conservation (see Appendix I). Over 100 information resources relevant for the historic environment were examined in the data gathering stage of this project. In all but a small number of cases, these resources are managed using computers. The exceptions to the rule are smaller organisations, such as amenity societies and special interest groups, which have not yet been able to secure resources to transfer their information to digital media. Computerised systems range from text-based indices and flat file databases which provide tools for access to largely paper resources, to wholly digital information resources using an Intranet and GIS as an interface for access to multiple relational databases, CAD files and digital images.

2.22 Appendix II presents summaries of the information collected about each of the resources examined. This is not a finite listing but provides a comprehensive cross-section of systems which exist in information managing and conservation organisations, and a reasonable coverage of related systems developed by specialist, user and enabling bodies. It was not feasible, within the scope of this project, to profile every relevant data set in the larger scale systems, but for organisations that support diverse and wide-ranging activities in the historic environment (e.g. English Heritage, Historic Scotland, Council for British Archaeology) summaries have been compiled for significant datasets and sub-systems in order to show the complexity that is a characteristic of the information 'map'. Typically, each information resource has developed a bespoke network of connections with other resources, the links for which are often informal and unstructured. The Case Studies in Resource Discovery (Section 3) illustrate this complexity across the sector in more detail. The policies and resources of organisations, and the technical options available at a particular time, have influenced the variety of ways in which information has been created, stored and disseminated.

2.23 The mapping exercise has aided a better appreciation of what is self-evidently a common characteristic of most information systems. Generally they are designed to serve the immediate needs of organisational functions rather than the optimum use of information for a wide constituency of possible users in the future. This applies particularly to some private thematic systems which tend to be driven more by the interest of the participants in collecting the information than in broadcasting it widely. The full potential usage and future value of existing data is now becoming perceptible, however, with convergence in data standards and structures, joint working across and between organisations, and movement towards the goal of interoperability. Some organisations are already well advanced in developing this potential and are responding to Government policies for increased public access by transforming systems into resources for wider use. To a large extent, however, this potential is still only envisioned within the operational sphere of the individual organisation or occasionally a small group of organisations.

2.24 The mapping exercise has also confirmed a general perception that separate information managing organisations are developing their own future strategies with little awareness of initiatives in the rest of the sector or in adjacent fields. The over view across information resources in the UK heritage sector which HEIRNET is making possible - albeit as a point in time study - has not, hitherto, been one to which individual organisation have had access. The range of technical options that are becoming available, and what they may mean for future development, are also aspects about which there is relatively little general awareness. The technical issues are explored in depth in Section 5. The remainder of this section presents the information management issues surrounding the creation and storage, dissemination and use of data which have emerged from the survey.

2.25 While most primary historic environment data is collected in the field locally, systematic creation and storage of data takes place on a local, regional, national or international scale. Organisations in general operate at only one of these and data creation for their information systems is selective in relation to the scale and the purpose of their operation. This can be illustrated, for example, by considering the information about an historic barn which might be compiled for an entry on the statutory List. This will differ from the type and structure of information compiled for the same building as an item in a Buildings-at-Risk register, in an NMR, in an SMR, in the SPAB Barns survey or the archive management system of an archaeological organisation. These distinctions are rarely explicit, however, for the external user who wishes to discover information resources about barns in general or one barn in particular. An even more significant barrier for the potential information user is the lack of any mechanism for discovering what relevant information resources exist. The process of mapping information resources has revealed the pressing need for a guide to the purpose and scope of historic environment information compiled in different systems and for much more clarity among information managing organisations themselves about their roles and data collection policies.

2.26 Data created over time in evolving information systems varies in consistency and currency as the purpose, selectivity and scope of a system change. Indexing for retrieval is an issue in any system that has been running for several decades, where terminology has evolved and a comprehensive thesaurus incorporating existing standards has yet to be developed. These issues are illustrated by the British and Irish Archaeological Bibliography which, despite these constraints, theoretically has potential to provide a digital bibliographic data resource for the archaeological community across the British Isles. Lack of conformity in the use of standards for terminology and data structure emerge repeatedly as a central concerns of information managers and as a stumbling block to the further development of information resources. This is particularly the case for the resources of special interest groups where data sets have been collected largely as a result of voluntary effort over several years.

2.27 In the area of dissemination and use, integrated access between distributed HEIRS within, and between, organisations was also commonly identified by the mapping process as a fundamental requirement which many systems were some distance from realising. For historic property and estate managers who need access to a range of environmental information resources, there are complex issues of interconnectivity for their internal systems between archaeology, historic buildings, historic contents, landscape and biological heritage. Some organisational advances are being made towards integration, for example, in the development of the English Heritage NMR 'Heritage Spatial Information System' (HSIS) which will bring together mapped data for statutorily protected sites and buildings with registered parks, gardens and battlefields in a system that provides links to relevant databases. This will have similar features to the joint arrangement which already exists for Historic Scotland and the Scottish NMR.

2.28 Beyond this, however, the complexity of conservation management arrangements in England, Scotland and Wales (arrangements differ in Northern Ireland) is reflected in a suite of information sets which are held in parallel by many systems but which cannot at present be accessed together. The desirability of remote access to Conservation Area boundary information, for example, was a commonly mentioned item. This data is largely held by local authorities on their own individualGIS but the complexity of the spatial data transfer or creation involved in compiling a single master set for England has so far has deterred progress. The situation in other UK countries may be closer to resolution but user access to integrated information about statutorily protected places at a national scale remains elusive, even for those with a role in the statutory consultation process, such as the national amenity societies. The CBA's listed building casework database, for example, provides a unique database of notifications of listed building consent in England covering the last five years, but its full value in providing information about the overall state of the historic built environment has yet to be ascertained. Developments in this area may move more swiftly if the latter is mounted on the Internet as proposed next year.

2.29 Other alternatives to the construction of 'master' information sets are also being explored. The ADS/RCAHMS pilot project, Accessing Scotland's Past, aimed to link information in the NMRS, three Scottish SMRs and ADS archival holdings through the Internet using a metadata index, while the underlying data remained distributed. The achievement of the project's full aims was frustrated by data incompatibilities which would have required extensive programmes of data-cleaning for remote searching beyond the metadata level in the SMRs. Similarly in archaeo-science there is currently limited scope for integrated searches of the various UK databases because of the lack of standardisation in compilation and vocabularies (e.g. the various radiocarbon databases). These will have limited value as a research tool without a more integrated approach. This issue is relevant to the debate over the dispersal and final deposit of datasets and archives for regional, national and UK projects such as the Defence of Britain or the wetland surveys. A short term solution is the deposit of digital copies in parallel in local and national record centres. As these distributed resources are enhanced over time, however, the result will be the loss of a current, unified digital resource unless ways of issuing updates accessed from distributed datasets are developed.

2.30 Finally dissemination and user needs are beginning to influence the way in which information for the historic environment is managed, just as in the museum sector (the Netful of Jewels initiatives) and the nature conservation sector, information management is responding to the requirement for new presentations of data. For English Nature, for example, the challenge which follows on the successful establishment of the National Biodiversity Network will lie in structuring data in a meaningful way which serves the needs of general interest and education users (for non-technical summary information about local nature conservation and the larger national picture) but which can still provide a bespoke route into national and across regional and local records for the detailed enquirer. These questions are equally relevant for the historic environment information network. As one respondent commented, "all efforts to integrate systems will be wasted if the result does not allow users to extract information (and indeed to reveal new information) efficiently and in ways which were not previously possible".

2.31 In summary the principal information management ISSUES identified in the mapping of existing historic environment resources include:

• The lack of organised accessible information about information resources is a barrier to resource discovery.
• Many existing information systems are designed primarily to serve the internal functions of their organisations and not as information resources which can serve the wider information needs of a range of different users.
• The important opportunities offered by integrated common access between information systems are recognised but are hampered by lack of consistent standards in the basic quality of the information held.
• The development and collective adoption of data standards, especially for terminology control, requires resources and incentives in order to make progress towards interoperability.
• Successful public access depends on the availability of data structures and search tools capable of producing genuinely useful information for educational and public use as well as for specialists and professionals.

Organisational structures

2.32 Information managing organisations provide the key to information access. They provide the mechanisms and structures for collecting, maintaining and delivering information and make important decisions about the classes of information which are relevant for their own use and the use of others in the historic environment sector. The broad groupings of current organisational arrangements are outlined in the operational framework in Appendix I. These are core information compiling and managing bodies, conservation organisations, specialist study and research bodies, secondary 'user' organisations, and organisations which facilitate information access. While the process of 'mapping' the information systems that these organisations manage (Appendix II) has not changed that picture, certain features have emerged as significant.

2.33 Most organisations are readily able to provide general details of their information holdings, the media in which they are held, and the means by which they can be accessed. However, for a number of information holders (among them are some of the national amenity societies and a number of specialist societies and groups) shortages of organisational resources have placed a de facto limit on access. Un-indexed, non-digital record systems cannot be systematically managed or searched, either remotely or locally, and any external user is dependent for intelligent access on substantial assistance from an archivist, research officer or caseworker in the organisation. In such circumstances the information can only be of limited use to the organisation itself and is vulnerable to loss in terms of security and long term management.

2.34 Only a few organisations provided clear statements about the purposes for which their historic environment information is collected and the range of users for whom the information is designed to be available. Most organisations are able to supply a straightforward list of user groups or bodies who request information on an occasional or regular basis. However, scarcely any organisations interviewed referred to systematic collection of information about user numbers and types. Only two referred to carrying out any survey of user needs to assist their organisation in identifying the type of information and media preferred by users of historic environment information (ADS and CBA). (This information was not specifically requested in the HEIRNET interview but it was expected that such resources would have been referred to if available).

2.35 In most organisations, with the notable exception of those whose core function is the provision of a public information service, it is rare to find data structured and presented in a way which is designed to meet user needs for information outside the organisation. The vast majority of historic environment data is generated by organisations responsible for conservation management and is managed as datasets for other professionals and specialists in conservation management to use. As the sections above make clear, information structure and access for broader academic, educational, cultural, economic and social uses is only just beginning to be considered as a part of the larger role of organisations in the conservation process.

2.36 Specific identified ISSUES include:

• Generally poor definition of the roles of organisational information systems has resulted in overlap, inefficiency and lack of constructive joint working to link with complementary systems. Examples of good practice include, for example, Historic Scotland and the RCAHMS which have a mutually beneficial policy to minimise duplication of holdings and facilitate access to each others data with an open bilateral link across certain defined areas of information.
• There are weak or non-existent connections in organisations between 'interpretative' information (museum, historic house and on-site presentation and literature) and the underpinning detailed information held in systems (for collections / archive management or conservation management). Significant resource implications are perceived to be attached to the design of usable information systems for broad educational and social uses because of the fundamental recasting required to modify datasets assembled for professional users.
• The notions of organisational 'territories' and ownership of 'markets' may operate counter to the emerging trend towards shared common information resources. Few organisations have yet recognised that future market advantage will lie as much in the accessibility, usability and attractiveness of bespoke interfaces for the user, as in the information which is available.
• There is an enormous difference in the degree of quality assurance (i.e. compliance with - and currently a lack of - agreed industry standards) and provision of validated data between different individual organisations. Consequently organisations have low confidence in procurement or migration of data from external sources as a reliable resource for their own activities.
• Public record offices and other historic documentary record holding organisations at national and local level are perceived as managing information with different access and retrieval requirements from organisations in historic environment conservation. Potential must exist to link this area much more effectively with NMR/SMRS, archaeological archives, and museum collections management (e.g. through initiatives such as the Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, British Isles Historical GIS Project and the development of appropriate search tools).
• Generally it is perceived that separate information managing organisations are developing their own future strategies with little awareness of initiatives in the rest of the sector or adjacent fields and lost opportunities for building constructive relations.

3 Case Studies in Resource Discovery

The following case studies do not provide a comprehensive map of HEIRs in the UK. Their selection has rather been determined by the desire to provide illustrations of the range of types of overlaps and the range of issues constraining the development of a strategic vision. In all cases further detail and the data underlying the case studies can be found in Appendix II.

The first case study looks at current initiatives in the UK Higher Education sector. This necessarily ranges beyond the disciplines involved in the study of the historic environment but shows how these are subject to broader trends in information management. The second study is concerned with historic estate asset information systems. This is an area in which there are multiple user groups and a need for both management and research information, both from within an outside the historic environment sector. The next two case studies each examine a specific sub-sector within the historic environment where data collection indicated multiple initiatives and potential for a high degree of overlap: historic gardens and landscape, and historic religious buildings. The fifth and sixth case studies each take sub-disciplines defined by their chronological boundaries: Roman Britain and the industrial heritage. Again there are multiple user groups and multiple initiatives. Finally, artefactual research and scientific artefactual databases are examined as two case studies in which research themes and important and where there are particular problems of integrating information.

3.1 UK Higher Education Sector

(See also the following summaries in Appendix II: ADS, DNER, eLib, RDNC, RSLP, University of the Highlands and Islands)

Introduction

The UK Higher Education sector should not be neglected in the development of Historic Environment Information Resources. With millions of pounds of investment every year in IT equipment and infrastructure, services and support there is a great deal to gain from this sector. It is an extremely complex and political arena, and one poorly understood outside universities (and sometimes even within universities).

The Higher Education Sector has gained an enviable international reputation for Research and Development in ICT, often putting the UK at the forefront in developments in the electronic dissemination of information. Much of this has been achieved through the initiatives promoted by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), a committee of the University Funding Councils for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. JISC receives a top-sliced grant from the funding Councils. In the days of high-cost mainframe and supercomputers much of this grant was directed towards subsidising computer hardware within the old universities and although a high proportion of JISC's budget is still taken up with the maintenance of the UK SuperJANET network, through its Committees JISC is able to exert significant influence over research and development funding.

Those working within the HE sector have privileged access to information resources, and particularly to high speed Internet links. In Archaeology however they are primarily consumers rather than producers of information, and this difference reflects deeper divides between the academic and field profession, although shared and integrated access to research and teaching information via the WWW offers great potential for bridging this divide. Similarly, initiatives to widen access to HE, to develop 'life-long learning', and to place greater emphasis on distance learning (itself dependent on electronic networks) will each work to foster greater cooperation between the HE and professional sectors. For information providers outside the HE sector striving to promote usage of their services, universities are seen as large and hitherto under exploited markets.

The fact that research and teaching of the historic environment is only a small sub-discipline within the HE sector means that developments in the HE sector must move forward in tandem with initiatives is other disciplines. Nonetheless, because it has tended to be relatively advanced in its usage of ICT, archaeology has often found itself used as a case study for developments in electronic dissemination (the promotion of the electronic journal Internet Archaeology under the eLib programme being a case in point). Furthermore, the international nature of HE based research (probably often to a greater extent outside archaeology) has meant that ICT initiatives have also had to keep in step with developments elsewhere in Europe, Australasia and North America. The role of the ADS within the AHDS initiative to promote the Dublin Core metadata standard within UK HE provides an example of how the HE sector can enable developments in HEIRs to be linked to a broader stage.

The HEFCs and JISC

One area of potential overlap within the HE sector stems from an ill-defined division of responsibility between JISC and the parent funding councils SHEFC, HEFCW, DENI and HEFCE. On occasion SHEFC, HEFCW, DENI and HEFCE have promoted national computerbased programmes independent of the JISC, particularly in support of teaching and learning.Thus the CTI (Computers in Teaching Initiative) and TLTP (Teaching and Learning Technology Programme) have operated independently of JISC. In the case of Archaeology the potential overlap of programmes has not been a problem as the Archaeology TLTP Consortium was coordinated from CTICH (CTI Centre for History, Archaeology and Art History) at the University of Glasgow, although neither programme really had access to a sufficiently developed infrastructure to gain a major impact. In the HE sector the number of players is also relatively small and channels of communication have been kept open via personal contact. The new subject centres are also an initiative from SHEFC, HEFCW, DENI and HEFCE, although it appears that they will have a reduced role in ICT as their brief is to cover the full range of teaching support. The effect of devolution on HE funding, and the extent to which the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh National Assembly, Westminster or the proposed Northern Ireland Assembly may distance themselves from joint initiatives designed in a different political climate has yet to be worked out.

The most recent initiative is the UK-wide RSLP (Research Support Libraries Programme). Already three of the projects which will be funded are creating historic environment digital resources: OASIS (an online catalogue of the grey literature relating to all archaeological investigations); ARCHWAY (an online catalogue of the periodicals literature relevant to Archaeology); and a third project to provide an Internet catalogue of the University of Cambridge collection of aerial photographs. Although independent of the JISC the role of the ADS within each of the projects should ensure that the products of this programme are disseminated without duplication or overlap.

JISC has sponsored a number of services which have provided support for teaching and research in the historic environment. Many have been concerned with procuring content for the HE sector, including the fast-track digitisation programme (which has led to the digitisation of the CBA's Research Report series) and CHEST. CHEST uses the combined purchasing power of the HE sector to negotiate privileged access to software and data sets for universities. As well as software used by archaeologists (e.g. ARC/INFO) CHEST has often acquired data sets relevant to the study of the historic environment, such as the Isle of Man GIS, but without any apparent awareness of its relevance to users in specific disciplines such as archaeology. It is hoped that the establishment of a post of JISC Collections Manager will ensure a coherent and coordinated approach to future content acquisition. JISC R&D programmes have also helped to develop electronic archaeological resources, most notably the electronic journal, Internet Archaeology. However, it is important to distinguish between JISC services (with the implication of long term support) and one-off initiatives (that must seek to become self-supporting beyond the lifetime of the programme).

In collaboration with the research councils JISC has also promoted a national network of discipline-specific data archives, most recently the AHDS. This was developed following a distributed model of an executive with five subject-based service providers, including the ADS. The same model has been followed in the development of the Resource Discovery Network. Here the JISC has established a national RDN Centre and a number of faculty level hubs, which will each be charged with acquiring and negotiating access to metadata records for their subject areas. The relationship between the RDN and the Data Archives may vary between disciplines. The Data Archives have a distinct remit for the preservation of digital data, and the RDN has a clear remit to catalogue high quality Internet resources. Nonetheless there is the potential for overlap where a Data Archive seeks to provide access to distributed resources which may be archived by other bodies, and a RDN Hub seeks to secure access to a web page it has catalogued, and both bodies seek to establish themselves as the 'one-stop shop' for their discipline. Fortunately the fact that the RDNC consortium is led by AHDS and UKOLN should ensure interoperability between those sites adopting Z39.50 protocols and Dublin Core metadata standards. For the historic environment, the ADS (in collaboration with the CBA and CTICH) is providing metadata catalogue records for the Humanities RDN hub, thereby ensuring interoperability and preventing overlap.

JISC's forward strategy for the development of information resources is subsumed within the Distributed National Electronic Resource Strategy. This recognises that whilst JISC has led the way with JANET as a national network, and the parallel development of digital resources, it is now being complemented by other networks designed to link institutions and facilitate learning. The National Grid for Learning will serve the school community, the New Library Network will support lifelong learning through public libraries. The overall aim of the DNER is to develop a framework that will support the creation of an easily accessible, comprehensive information resource that can be used by teachers, learners and researchers within and beyond the UK HE community. For the historic environment this should ensure interoperability between HEIRs developed primarily in the university sector, with those being developed through parallel initiatives in the Museums world (e.g. Cornucopia, 24-Hour Museum etc).

In summary, although this is a rapidly changing field, the coordinating role of the JISC has worked to minimise overlap and duplication within the HE sector. The challenge is to integrate developments within HE with those in the independent, professional and public sectors, including museums. Developments funded by outside agencies, particularly those derived from the National Lottery, or EC programmes, have a potentially disruptive and duplicating effect, unless there products can be channelled through existing infrastructures. The goal of the DNER is to promote a higher education initiative that corresponds with the National Grid for Learning and the New Library Network. This will require a sustained programme of promotion and publicity to raise awareness within and beyond the HE community.

3.2 Resource Discovery: Historic Estate Asset Information Systems

(See also summaries in Appendix II for: Cadw, English Heritage, Historic Scotland, NIEH, the National Trust, British Waterways, Defence Estate, Forestry Commission, Society of Antiquaries of London, Courtauld Institute PMSA, Ironbridge Institute and Museums, Sussex Archaeological Society et alia)

Introduction

Historic estates and properties encompass the full scope, complexity and uses of the historic environment and can include the management of extensive historic assets which are geographically dispersed across the UK. The biological and natural heritage are also important aspects of historic estate management while other environmental attributes may be relevant in urban and community contexts.

Core information about historic assets

This is compiled and maintained by public and private estates to inform responsible and sustainable environmental and property management regimes and to ensure compliance with relevant statutory procedures for protected sites. HEIRs in this group are designed as tools for good management practice rather than as resources for public consultation, although they do usually provide a public enquiry service. Much information may be migrated, by agreement or licence, from core compilers of historic environment information. The principal resources on which an estate HEIR will commonly draw are the statutory heritage datasets (lists and registers) and local HEIRs in local government and national parks. NMR data is also sometimes relevant. For rural and agricultural estates, important data is also held in local record centres for biodiversity, the national statutory datasets for nature conservation and spatial datasets for historic land use or landscape character where these have been developed.

The level of information required for particular property and estate management purposes is commonly more detailed than would be held in national or local HEIRs. Basic migrated information is often enhanced on an ad hoc basis, while new commissioned surveys, through independent field services or related Royal Commission thematic studies, are linked to management strategies and development of conservation programmes in particular contexts. Flows of primary data back to core compiler HEIRs are often irregular. Some historic estates hold significant collections of archive, art and artefacts which require collection inventory and management systems. Information in estate HEIRs may be sensitive or governed by other constraints on access.

There is use of standard thesauri and migrated data normally remains in conformity with the standards of parent compiler bodies. However, there is also common use of bespoke word lists and a wide variety in data structure.

Organisations managing conservation information

Organisations that manage conservation information for historic estates and which compile and maintain their own HEIRs fall broadly into two categories. The first group are bodies which manage historic properties for public benefit and enjoyment (national heritage agencies, National Trusts and other charitable trusts, National Parks, local authorities) and which require detailed inventories and information systems to support management of collections, sensitive historic structures and interiors and the complex archaeological contexts and historic landscapes which form their settings. Their information systems are also important for research, education and public interpretation although few direct public interfaces exist for physical or electronic access. The second group of organisations have broader estate management roles and are concerned with the overall business objectives of their estates which coincidentally include historic assets. These include public organisations (e.g. Ministry of Defence, Forestry Commission) and large private bodies (water companies, British Waterways) whose information management systems form part of an environmental conservation service for their business. Their role in promoting research, education and interpretation of the historic environment is subsidiary to their principal business goals and accordingly there is less emphasis on the need for accessibility and intelligibility of their information systems beyond professional use.

Current coverage

Coverage is variable and depends on regular updating with migrated data for statutory designations and for new data acquired in local and national HEIRs. Regular information flows between estate HEIRs and core HEIR compilers cannot easily be maintained because of variations in data standards and quality. Decisions in an estate management context also need to be informed of the broader historic environment context and to view resources in the local or national picture. Remote access to local and national datasets for this purpose would be the ideal. (See also section in industrial monuments for comments on duplication of holdings for statutorily protected items).

Potential re-use

The principal outreach for information from these HEIRs is through environmental interpretation at places of interest and presentation of historic properties and archaeological sites to the public. Educational use of the information is usually mediated through an education section or officer. SCRAN is an example of electronic, multi-media access and provides one model for public accessibility to information about larger historic estates. More modest resources would be required to develop Web sites for historic properties (already existing for the main historic estate managers and heritage agencies) to signpost visitors to more specialised information resources. Where estate HEIRs do not have a primary role in providing public information, the importance of regular migration of relevant new data to publicly accessible information systems is highly desirable and will benefit from the more user friendly interfaces being developed by local and national HEIRs.

3.3 Resource discovery: Historic gardens and designed landscapes

(See also the following summaries in Appendix II: English Heritage Parks and Gardens Register, Historic Scotland Historic Landuse Assessment project, NIEH Parks, Gardens and Domains Database, RCHAMW Parks, Gardens and Landscapes Database, Countryside Agency, English Nature, Scottish Natural Heritage, University of York Historic Gardens Database, Folly Fellowship, Georgian group, Victorian Society, Hampshire County Council Historic Landscape Character Project, Fife Historic Environment Conservation etc)

Introduction

Historic gardens and designed landscapes are a feature of urban and rural contexts and occur in all periods from that of Roman Britain to modern times. The range of their environmental attributes includes historic buildings and structures, earthworks and other archaeological sites and their landscape context: historic layouts and planting, enclosures, route ways, and landuse history. Historic landscapes can be as significant as the site of biological heritage interest as they are for their cultural attributes.

Core information about historic assets

Information for conservation management includes the data sets which support the various national registers of historic parks, gardens and designed landscapes. Their broader context lies in the historic landscape assessment and characterisation programmes being developed in various parts of the UK. These are nested in turn within broader based national and regional landscape assessment programmes, undertaken to support the work for the national countryside and nature conservation agencies and, at a local level, for the purpose of strategic planning. A number of World Heritage Sites are designated in part for their landscape significance and are documented in detail for management purposes. As with the industrial heritage, the conservation management of the majority of historic gardens and landscapes depends on informed management of land-use change and land management decisions outside the procedures of formal designation. Important management information systems are those developed by the major historic property managers, such as the National Trusts, the national heritage agencies and other historic property owners and trusts for their properties in care.

Organisations managing conservation information

Core information resources in this area are compiled and maintained by the National Monuments Records, the UK Parks and Gardens Database and local Sites and Monuments records. These are fed by flows of new information from thematic and period research studies. Sources include surveys commissioned or undertaken by heritage bodies and organisations (e.g. the Royal Commissions and national heritage agencies), academic and independent specialist research, and new field investigation conducted by archaeological practices and universities. A number of detailed databases are privately compiled and maintained for specialist research purposes.

Current coverage

The UK Parks and Gardens Database is developing a comprehensive information resource for the subject area which will, if funding resources are achieved, offer UK-wide coverage. Strengthened by links with the national registers and the resources of the major historic property owners this subject area has the potential to become one of the strongest information resource bases of the historic environment. Public interest and active involvement in schemes for garden and landscape restoration is correspondingly strong. A number of specialist vocabularies exist and co-ordination and consistent use of wordlists is an essential pre-requisite to developing interoperability.

Potential re-use

Re-use could respond to the widespread public engagement with this subject through the development of more user-friendly interfaces and UK-wide directories and resource discovery for visitors and conservationists. An accessible, GIS-based, co-ordinated information system for registered gardens and landscapes is recognised as a valuable tool for conservation management and for general public interest

Duplication

This is a feature of statutory, independent, national and local research databases in this area and flows between them are erratic.

3.4 Resource Discovery: Historic religious buildings

(See also the following summaries in Appendix II: Diocese of Southwell Church History Project, Census of Medieval Tiles, British Institute of Organ Studies, Council for the Care of Churches, Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England, Royal Archaeological Institute Church Plans Index, National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies)

Introduction

Historic religious buildings and the sites of former ones, of all faiths and denominations, are notable not only for their intrinsic interest to a wide range of people, but also for the amount of record-creating attention that has been paid to them. Information about them can be read along several cultural, environmental and historical axes. The traditional tendencyto describe prehistoric sites of uncertain function as 'ritual' speaks for itself, and early religious sites are usually regarded as particularly significant for the understanding of past societies. Those buildings still in a religious use are relevant as above-ground structures and buried evidence, as architectural masterpieces, as expressions of liturgical practice and of patronage; significance also extends to their contents, their designed settings and immediate environments, taking in biological and ecological matters. The associations of a rich historical and spiritual context can embrace all these elements. Their linkages with the life of a community and a continuum of human experience in a particular locality can invest them with a distinctive and enduring value.

The need for appropriate national and local information systems for the heritage of the Anglican Church has been the subject of discussion and a series of studies since the early 1990s. Some initial assessment of archaeological and historical information for medieval cathedral close sites was begun for English Heritage's Monuments Protection Programme before the implementation of the Care of Cathedrals Measure 1991 which introduced the Church of England's own conservation controls for the historic fabric, contents and setting of cathedrals. In 1996, the Green Paper Protecting Our Heritage confirmed that faculty jurisdiction (under the CCEJM 1991) would continue to offer an acceptable framework for management of the Church's archaeological resource. This was provided that appropriate procedures were in place, analogous, for example, to those required under PPG15 and PPG16 for documentation and assessment of the historic environment and for archaeology, a point re-emphasised by the recent Newman review of the ecclesiastical exemption.

At the time of writing, the Church of England has been considering how to satisfy its information needs for conservation-related purposes. Original proposals for a large, possibly monolithic, system are being rethought in the light of awareness that a considerable amount of information already exists in a diversity of sources. There is a perception that the real task is to achieve adequate linkages between them, at national and local levels, and within localities, as the basis for setting standards towards which all can evolve at their own realistic paces. Part of this must involve building upon those such systems which individual dioceses and cathedral chapters have been evolving in response to the requirements of the 1991 Measure.

Proposals for a study of needs and options have been formulated by CCC / CFCE and accepted for funding by DCMS. The study, to be undertaken during the current financial year (1999-2000) will indicate the gap between perceived needs and existing provision, and it is hoped that this will enable realistic ways forward to be devised. It raises issues about what kinds of systems the Anglican church ought to have, how it might link together otherwise separately considered aspects, and link to other existing information systems. Its broad aims are to analyse and assess the perceived needs of users for information about the Church's heritage in relation to issues of management, conservation, planning control, investigation, research, education and access, and to assess how far the needs of users are being met by existing information systems. It intends to evaluate a range of practicable options for meeting user requirements through improved management and enhancement of information about the Church's heritage.

Core information about historic assets

There are core information resources in the recently completed survey of Welsh churches; a Scottish Churches Inventory project has made some progress using volunteers; a 'needs and options' study for an English (Anglican) church heritage record has just begun. Other material is widely dispersed. It exists in local and national general systems, such as SMRs and NMRs, and in systems maintained for a range of purposes by church organisations themselves. There are also specialist systems, such as those dealing with medieval window glass, historic organs, bells, graveyard memorials and brasses. Much material has been published following systematic surveys, in the statutory lists of historic buildings, volumes of the Royal Commissions (the English survey of non-conformist chapels is notable), the Victoria County History and the Buildings of England series. There are many one-off studies at varying levels of scholarship, in county histories, academic journals and church guides.

Organisations managing conservation information

Relatively little of this information is organised and accessible for conservation management, partly because its regulation is largely exempted from the controls of the secular planning system and their SMRs, and partly because use of records systems in conserving upstanding buildings is much less developed than for archaeology. There is however growing awareness that a need exists to be satisfied, certainly within the Anglican church, stimulated by high-level interest in the churches and government, coinciding with 1997 as Christian Heritage Year. More progress has been made with Anglican cathedrals, through their Fabric Advisory Committees, appointed architects and archaeological consultants, than with parish and other local churches. Some dioceses are developing administrative record systems holding some historical information, but largely voluntary Diocesan Archaeological Advisers generally do not run systems equivalent to SMRs.

A particular issue is how to involve in the process of information gathering those who use historic churches for worship, so that they may better appreciate their significance and value, while at the same time ensuring adequate standards of documentation are met. Religious factors are involved: in general, non-conformist or evangelical groups are more conscious of the living church community and less of the value of historic buildings which might be underpinned by heritage information. As the recent report ('Church Archaeology: Its Care and Management') from an Archaeological Working Party of the Council for the Care of Churches shows, there is a long way to go still before the place of information is fully recognised and operationally incorporated. In line with current thinking it recommends that a 'statement of significance' should be prepared for each building, to act as a trigger for its management and the proper consideration of any proposals for repair or alteration.

Current coverage

Coverage needs to be assessed at two levels. It would be fairly easy to assemble an extensive level of general index or outline information from existing published sources and surveys. Finding out what has been recorded more intensively and where the information can be retrieved, as well as assessing its reliability, is a much larger task. It is likely that coverage concentrates upon the main standing building and those aspects of fittings and contents that are covered by specialist records or surveys, with less attention paid to churchyards and their contents.

Potential re-use

There is huge scope for potential re-use of church heritage information in the broadest sense, for conservation management, education, tourism and community involvement. Much, however, depends upon collecting, organising and presenting it in appropriate formats. It is ideal material for local web-site access, as the experimental Southwell Church History Project is demonstrating, though achieving a product of high standards makes significant technical and academic demands.

Duplication

There is probably considerable duplication in the record holdings that relate to the more frequently surveyed buildings. Consequently it is important to be aware of the pedigree of current general descriptions in, say, the Buildings of England volumes or a list description, which may well perpetuate the biases, omissions and errors of their sources.

3.5 Resource Discovery for Roman Britain

(See also summaries in Appendix II for National Monuments Records and the statutory datasets of national heritage agencies, ASPROM Corpus of Roman Mosaics, Cornucopia, Museum of London, Portable Antiquities Recording Scheme, SCRAN, York Archaeological Trust inter alia)

Introduction

The aspects of the historic environment that are relevant for the period of the Roman conquest and occupation of Britain include archaeological sites, monuments and landscapes across the period defined. A significant information set relates to artefacts of the period which are commonly subjects of interest for individual collectors and scholars (see separate case study 3.7), although they may not always have a site-specific relation to their historic context.

Core information about historic assets

Core information systems and data sets for Romano-British archaeology are held in the National Monuments Records, in local Sites and Monuments Record systems and in museum collections management systems. These are fed by flows of new information from thematic and period-based research projects and programmes. Sources include surveys commissioned or undertaken by heritage bodies and organisations (e.g. the Royal Commissions, National Trust and national heritage agencies), academic and independent specialist research, and new field investigations conducted by archaeological practices, universities and local archaeological groups. A number of detailed databases are compiled and maintained on a personal, or project-related basis, by individuals for specialist research purposes and are not generally accessible (e.g. specialist ceramic, coin and small find series).

Organisations managing conservation information

The key information management systems for conservation of the historic environment are the statutory datasets which support scheduling (and, to a much lesser extent, listing) their management systems at a national and local level, and the information systems of the statutory amenity societies which influence decisions on policy and on individual applications. SMRs, and other broader-based local historic environment information systems have a central role in informing local authority policies and action in strategic and land use planning and development. These records, at national and local level, relate almost wholly to defined sites and find spots (in cases where these are interpreted as representing occupation of the period or some other site context) and only occasionally in the UK to surviving structures. Information about related landscape features and patterns of land use is beginning to be identified and interpreted in historic landscape assessment programmes and extensive survey projects in some parts of the UK (e.g. Fenlands, Northamptonshire). The World Heritage Site of Hadrian's Wall is one of the most extensive in the UK and documentation being developed for its management plan will offer a valuable educational and research resource for students of Roman defence and frontier history.

Current coverage

The archaeology of Roman Britain has a long history of study and scholarship in its own right and is accordingly relatively well documented at the local level and at national level with particular areas of specialist research receiving a high level of coverage. Information holdings in local records are variable in quality and coverage across the UK. Resource discovery in this context is a labour intensive activity since large numbers of separate record centres must be interrogated and the information retrieved will be variable in vocabulary, structure, and scope. For information about artefacts of the period, the constraints outlined in 'Resource Discovery: Artefacts' are specially relevant. Information about individual finds and museum accessioned objects may be readily available B from e.g. SMRs, the Portable Antiquities database and museum catalogues B but information about individual items from archaeological contexts recorded as part of a field investigations is seldom easily retrievable (see below, section 3.7).

Potential re-use

In terms of popular interest, general public demand for information about the Roman period in Britain, particularly from students and teachers in primary and secondary education, is keen and reinforced by the national curriculum. A significant number of re-enactment and Roman life style groups witnesses the extent of popular interest, often linked to serious academic study for specific topics (such as costume, military equipment). The museum world has responded to this interest and access to the sector via Cornucopia is now available, for example, for those wishing to search museum collections for this subject area. In Scotland SCRAN offers multimedia access to information about the period. There is considerable potential for developing popular access to existing resources but alongside this are concerns about the particular vulnerability of sites of this period to treasure hunters. The Portable Antiquities Database will be breaking new ground in this area, as it begins to publish national grid co-ordinates for specific find spots on its Web site.

Duplication

A long tradition of scholarship in Britain in Roman archaeology has been based on the re-use and fresh analysis of primary data from earlier investigations. Strategic and thematic reassessment of the period in archaeological terms is hampered by the absence of reliable indexed resources in local and specialist information collections. Initiatives such as the Netful of Jewels for museums, bringing on-line access to collections management systems will begin to offer opportunities for new scholarship.

3.6 Resource Discovery: Industrial Archaeology

(See also summaries in Appendix II for: English Heritage Monuments Protection Programme, NIEH Industrial Heritage Database, British Waterways, Industrial Heritage Regeneration, Association for Industrial Archaeology IRIS, Ironbridge Institute and Museums, Watermill and Windmill Gazetteer etc)

Introduction

The scope of industrial heritage includes aspects of the built, buried, and landscape resources of the historic environment, in rural and urban contexts and across all periods from Neolithic exploitation of stone and flint resources to the industries of the present day. Industrial heritage sites also include attributes of importance for the history of technology, for the biological heritage and sites of geological interest.

Core information about historic assets

Core information systems and data sets for the industrial heritage are compiled and maintained in the NMRs and local environment information systems, particularly SMRs. These are supplied principally as systematic in house or commissioned surveys (e.g. for scheduling / listing assessments, Royal Commission thematic studies, National Park surveys, local authority conservation programmes). New data is also fed into the core systems by historic estate managers (e.g. National Trust, British Waterways, water authorities), and by a variety of specialist research groups and individual researchers. Flows from the latter sources are variable in scope and detail and the IRIS (Index Record for Industrial Sites) initiative, set up by the Association for Industrial Archaeology, is designed to aid and encourage the compilation of consistent records by local industrial archaeology field groups and individual researchers for the enhancement of SMRs and NMRs. Industrial museums, and industrial sites interpreted for the public, also hold important information resources for local industrial history and for the history of technology. Museums, record offices and libraries are holders of industrial archives and company records. Other relevant research and reference tools range from specialist to general educational resources and include, for example, the British and Irish Archaeological Bibliography, Images of England, SCRAN, digital archives and indexed information resources available as served resources (e.g. in ADS catalogue).

Organisations managing conservation information

Conservation information systems include the statutory datasets which support scheduling and listing, their management systems at a national and local level, and the information systems of the statutory amenity societies which influence decisions on policy and on individual LBC applications. In England, the national Buildings At Risk Register provides a separate but related database for nationally important buildings and includes many redundant industrial structures. A number of World Heritage Sites are designated primarily for their industrial history importance, for which information is documented locally in detailed surveys and management plans. However, the conservation management of the vast majority of historic industrial sites and landscapes depends on informed decisions outside the consent procedures required by formal designation. SMRs and other local information resources for the industrial built heritage and historic landscape character have a central role in informing local authority policies and action in strategic and land use planning and development control. This is particularly the case for large scale land reclamation and urban and rural regeneration programmes which often include historic industrial complexes.

Estate and property managers, public and private, play a key role in managing uses and changes for this aspect of the historic environment and maintain information systems to inform their management of the historic assets of extractive and industrial manufacturing processes and of related historic transport systems of the waterways and railways. Industrial landscapes, and the specialised ecological systems which they sometimes support, make a striking contribution to regional landscape character and can have significant nature conservation interest. Relevant information is managed by the Countryside Agency, by English Nature and local record centres for biodiversity. The Countryside Agency's Local Heritage Initiative is designed to encourage local communities to compile their own records of the diversity of local historic and natural assets in their neighbourhoods and identifies industrial heritage as a theme for projects in the Initiative.

A number of specialised vocabularies and glossaries for industrial archaeology have been developed. The IRIS class list and site/component list, in conjunction with the Monument Protection Programme Step 1-3 component lists, provide systematically compiled, specialist word lists for a range of industrial processes, structures and workings. The RCHME thesaurus of monument types is the commonly use standard. Information systems outside the core national and local compilers are extremely variable with a mixture of digital and non-digital media, uneven coverage and quality of data.

Mapping the relations between information sets, conservation activities and organisations for this aspect of the historic environment identifies a number of features.

Current coverage

Work in industrial archaeology has been characterized by localised research and independent field studies carried out by numerous specialist groups and individual researchers. The absence of well documented national studies of the chronologies, distribution and technologies of industry have led the Royal Commissions to a series of ongoing thematic surveys and the national heritage agencies to commission thematic research programmes as the basis for their conservation and statutory protection programmes for the industrial heritage. It remains poorly represented in local and national information resources for the historic environment, in part because of the uneven coverage of research, but also because many existing databases of information, often held independently, have not been recognised or available and have non-standard structures and vocabularies. Large datasets compiled systematically as part of national thematic studies - for example as part of the assessment process for statutory designation - are not easily available in compatible formats for migration to local information systems where they are usable.

There are significant common interests in the conservation of biological heritage, landscape character and industrial archaeology but the relevant datasets have only recently begin to be brought together to facilitate integrated management (see Section 3.2 Estate Management). Historic landscape character and land use mapping are developing information tools for integrated environmental management on a local scale.

Potential re-use

Educational use of information about industrial archaeology has been largely museum and site-related where there are immediate and meaningful connections with artefacts, historic structures and technology, and often actual industrial processes. As a ubiquitous resource in the historic environment - in rural and urban situations - the industrial heritage is readily accessible to physical access, but there is an absence of intelligible, general information to help interpret it away from selected sites. Local HEIRs, in conjunction with museums and libraries, are moving towards developing digital information resources suitable for use by schools and local communities. Museum IT developments such as the 24-hour Museum and initiatives such as SCRAN and the LHI, using multi-media approaches, may be signposting other ways in which this information can be more accessible and relevant.

Duplication

Information about statutory designated elements of the historic environment is duplicated in multiple record systems across the UK and structured in different ways. Statutory datasets are a shared information resource for national and local conservation bodies and for all historic estate managing activities. They are a valuable educational resource and have a potential commercial value. The statutory lists of historic building and scheduled ancient monuments are published in hard copy (in summary form in the case of the latter) and while all are also stored in digital form they are not publicly accessible in this medium as a fully usable resource (the Images of England project will offer a valuable educational and picture library resource but will not be an updated source for reference). Considerable economies of effort could be achieved by shared, controlled access to unified national datasets for statutorily scheduled, listed and registered sites as indexed digital resources.

3.7 Resource Discovery: Artefactual Research

(See also the following summaries in Appendix II: ADS, Netful of Jewels, Portable Antiquities Recording Scheme, SCRAN, Medieval Tile Census, Bedfordshire Local Study, York Archaeological Trust, Museums and Galleries Commission)

Introduction

Despite providing the basic buildings blocks for much archaeological research there is a lack of any form of national integrated database of artefactual data. In order to build national distribution maps and develop catalogues of material there is a key requirement from finds researchers to be able to locate examples of specific artefacts, but none of the existing or envisaged systems will fulfil this need in a comprehensive way.

Core information about historic assets

Some artefactual data is recorded in some Sites and Monuments Records, but usually only where chance finds are interpreted as reflecting in situ human activity. Where excavations have taken place the detailed artefactual evidence will be recorded in the excavation report archive, but will rarely be entered in that level of detail in the SMR. The Portable Antiquities recording scheme represents the first attempt to record finds information in a standardised fashion at national level. If HLF funding provides resources to allow comprehensive national coverage then finds researchers will at least be able to search finds reported by the public, but ironically will still be unable to recover information about finds recorded by the profession during archaeological fieldwork. Issues arise about the exchange of data between portable antiquities databases and SMRs, but unless excavation finds are entered at a similar level of detail the resulting artefactual record will still only represent a very partial coverage.

Organisations managing conservation information

Initiatives to develop the Portable Antiquities online database as an interoperable Z39.50 target offer the best hope to allow future users to search across SMRs, portable antiquities, and excavation archives, but this will depend upon agreement on metadata standards and vocabulary control. The PA Outreach Officer is a member of the mda Archaeological Thesaurus working group, and there is close collaboration with FISHEN. Common agreed thesauri and information standards are the cornerstones of database interoperability.

Initiatives to make information about museums collections more accessible are also likely to prove critical to future access to artefactual information. Online museum systems range from projects which seek to provide collections level resource discovery metadata (such as Cornucopia), through to those which seek to provide metadata for individual items (such as SCRAN) and those which seek to provide online access to collections themselves (such as the Netful of Jewels initiative). These national museums-led initiatives are generally developed with full awareness of standards and have also tended to be Z39.50 compliant. Continued liaison between the mda, MGC and archaeological standards groups such as FISHEN is important. HEIRNET also has a key role to play in providing links between the museums and other historic environment groups.

Current coverage

Beyond the level of databases that record the finds spots and current location of artefacts there is a substantial but largely uncatalogued mass of HEIRs covering specific artefact classes. Some of these are collective efforts of special interest groups (e.g. Querns Survey, Tiles Survey, CBA Implement Petrology Database); some have been developed with substantial funding (e.g. English Heritage sponsored ceramic thin sections or botanical databases, or British Academy sponsored corpora projects of Anglo-Saxon sculpture or Roman inscriptions for instance); but the vast majority are those collected by individuals as part of specific research projects, such as personal research degrees, and not subsequently maintained.

Potential re-use

There are clear mismatches between the needs of those recording artefactual data in the course of fieldwork (with a publication in view); those responsible for curating the finds archive in a museum (where collections management is the principle concern), and those reinterpreting finds for a public or schools audience, or carrying out research on a museums collection. Nonetheless, there are constant and predictable information flows and the potential to avoid labourious rekeying of information if certain standards are followed at each stage.

Duplication

There is frequently very little awareness of standards when such projects are instigated, and often little thought about extending access to the data beyond the lifespan of the project. Consequently there is tremendous duplication and overlap amongst researchers creating and maintaining databases of object classes for their own research interests. Although few such systems are suitable as general purpose records of artefacts adequate metadata should ensure that they are re-usable for some purposes at least. The work of the ADS in cataloguing and curating artefactual databases should alleviate this problem to some extent.

3.8 Resource Discovery: Scientific Databases - artefacts

(See also the following summaries in Appendix II: Ancient Monuments Laboratory, Archaeology Data Service, Bedfordshire County Council, Ancient Metallurgy Research Group, Central Archaeology Service, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, Monuments and Buildings Register, Museum of London, York Archaeological Trust)

Introduction

Scientific databases cover a diverse range of techniques and periods. There are many different datasets that may be classified as 'scientific', the biological heritage information held within SMR's, for example, are clearly scientific in both their creation and use. Yet for the purpose of this case study, only those datasets that relate to material culture are considered. Consequently such databases mainly range from specialist reports created as part of the post-excavation process to systematic studies of specific artefact types. Together such information systems form a valuable but disparate and uncoordinated set of information systems and resources.

Core information about historic assets

There are essentially two different types of core information systems and data sets for scientific databases:

• those which rest with the data creators themselves and are a product of and a resource for their research. For example, the work of the Ancient Metallurgy Research Group and the Ancient Monuments Laboratory involves the active creation of new datasets. In turn these datasets form a resource within the organisation that inform the creation and interpretation of future datasets.
• those which have been deposited with a data repository as part of a site or project archive. For example, the MBR and the ADS hold many scientific data sets that are were created as a part of the post-excavation process. These are static datasets and are not being systematically developed by the organisations that hold the data.

Organisations managing conservation information

In general terms if one is interested in ceramic datasets from medieval abbeys in York and / or London, the first scholarly port of call for information would naturally be YAT and the MoL. If, however, a specialist wanted to further contextualise these data with information from other medieval abbeys the finding aids held by the ADS and the resources they possess may be of more use. ArchSearch, the ADS catalogue would enable a researcher to find other UK wide medieval abbeys and point them towards the resource holders. In the case of Eynsham Abbey, in Oxfordshire, the researcher would be able to use the data deposited with the ADS and gain access to the ceramic datasets over the Internet.

Current coverage

Scientific artefact databases may be said to cover the entire spectrum of material culture and are truly multi-period. They are an integral component of the archaeological process and consequently range from the scientific analysis of lithic artefacts to industrial era metalworking. Nevertheless the coverage of such databases are constrained by the priorities of funding organisations, both in terms of the scientific research into particular classes of material culture and the nature, scale and location of developer funded investigations. Consequently the coverage of information resources is patchy and skewed towards the larger urban centres.

Potential re-use

The re-use potential of scientific databases is enormous. Specialist artefact researchers rely upon comparative datasets to contextualise their findings. Consequently there is a great demand for such information resources with the archaeological community. Both data creation and archiving agencies are aware of this demand and generally make their resources available to the scholarly community. The re-use potential of such resources is, however, constrained by a lack of finding aids. It is difficult to know specifically what datasets are held by each organisation. The Ancient Metallurgy research group, for example, want to extend their web presence and publicise their holdings in order to both raise awareness of the group and foster the re-use of its information resources.

Given the user demand for, and re-use potential of scientific databases the HEIRs should be encouraged both to publicise the scope and scale of their information resources and to make them available to the wider scholarly community. The Internet is clearly the primary delivery option for such information resources.

Duplication

Given that the majority of scientific databases are created as part of the post excavation process, there is little duplication.

4 National and Local Interfaces

4.1 That the brief for this project should have asked for suggestions as to how information systems might develop and for a 'strategic vision' reflects a time of transition. New ideas about a distributed network, its interoperability facilitated by convergent data standards and structures, contrast with the impracticability of earlier proposals for large monolithic systems and elaborately structured sets of smaller inter-dependent ones. However, a distributed network must not be unstructured, and its successful operation will rely upon clearly defined national and local responsibilities for curating discrete sets of data, so that users are aware what each system can provide.

4.2 There are outstanding 'interface' issues between the strategic centres in the information landscape. It is recommended that they are addressed as a pre-requisite for realising the new vision. Three kinds are discussed here, between 'national' and 'local', within 'national', and within 'local', the latter mostly subsuming 'regional'. The discussion does not include the largely absent working linkages between thematic or specialist systems and general ones, especially at the local level. That some points and illustrations occur in other contexts in this report underlines the inter-connections between the four elements of the overall framework for the historic environment (Appendix I).

National / Local Interface

4.3 Within five years of local Sites and Monuments Records emerging, there began a still continuing debate about the relationship between them and the older national records upon which initially they were largely based. A CBA Working Party reported on the issue (1975), and it was discussed at the pioneering Oxford conferences on 'Planning and the Historic Environment' (Baker 1977). Its history has been reviewed more recently by Clubb and Lang (1996) and in the report on the Monuments at Risk Survey (Darvill and Fulton 1998). Questions of who should do what at which level were often coloured by fears for survival and under-resourcing during difficult decades for public finance. Until the 1990s, the relatively primitive nature of information technology encouraged a view that its obvious scope for development was the way to solve most problems. In practice, improved software and hardware have allowed the issue of compatibility in data standards to come forward into its proper primary position, reinforced by increasing recognition that uses are ends and systems the means to them.

4.4 Clubb and Lang pointed out that most European countries have unitary national records, so the complex structure of UK local records is untypical, though it is worth asking how far either might change under the influence of growing regionalisation in the European community. That question itself emphasises how the geographically comprehensive records discussed in this study necessarily reflect or are attached to existing governmental structures. In England, Scotland and Wales, national / local patterns with slightly different emphases have emerged. (Northern Ireland has a single Record covering all five counties). The three National Monuments Records (NMRs), part of non-governmental organisations, with royal warrants to prepare and maintain inventories, 'top-down' records of the best survivals, have diversified to include specialised systems and wider indexes. Local Sites and Monuments Records (SMRs) mostly operate as part of local government though a minority is externally based. The content of all systems at both levels tends to be called the 'national data-set', a misleading term insofar as 'set' implies relationships that are more rational and structured than actually exist. The dynamics and tensions of the national / local interface can be reviewed through the three linked topics of functional roles, data-exchange procedures,and archival status.

4.5 The debate about functions seems to be moving from the relatively adversarial question of 'who should do what ?' towards a more collaborative appreciation of distinctive complementary roles. Historically, mutual perceptions of imperialism arose from national records wanting index material to the entire local record and local records wanting hard copies of material in the national record; aerial photographs are a particular irritant. The fact of transition is well illustrated both by the emergence in 1998 of a partnership statement between the RCHME, English Heritage and ALGAO, and by the time it took to prepare and agree. Trends towards multi-functionality have their origins in the fuzziness of a de facto distinction between NMRs, not having a direct and explicit role in environmental conservation but reasonably claiming to be providers of information usable for management purposes, and local SMRs, primarily serving land-use planning and management but several successfully claiming wider roles in education and research. At the end of the 1990s, links are strengthening between NMRs and other systems serving national-level statutory management processes, such as England's HSIS; SMRs face new opportunities for providing outreach services through funding from the UK-wide Heritage Lottery Fund.

4.6 Awareness of broadened roles is also clarifying how the two levels have distinct functions, serving the nation and the local community respectively. The national record should not be expected to hold all the detail generated by local activities or answer every specific detailed local question, but should know generally what might exist and where it might be found. The local record should not be expected to formulate general syntheses on topics of national scope, though should know where these are held and be able to relate local information to them. At both levels the situation is now being opened up by new agendas of public 'access' and social 'inclusiveness', (above, Sections 2.18-2.20) which emphasise that the capability of providing or facilitating different kinds of outputs for different uses is a basic function of any publicly funded record system at either level. Yet historically, records at both levels have had difficulties in making their information available in formats other than those suitable for use by trained researchers and land-use planners. The reasons have partly been outlook, an assumption that 'others' will come and do it for themselves, and partly shortage of resources, putting an absolute priority on inventory work or giving planning advice.

4.7 Shortage of resources must not be allowed to obscure the existence of distinctive roles in research, conservation and explanation at both national and community levels. They cannot all be satisfied from one level, and arguments about avoidable wasteful duplication ought to concentrate upon data curation rather than service provision. This reinforces the argument - generally accepted at national level but not yet entirely in many localities - that it is essential for comprehensive multi-purpose information systems to be maintained and developed by professional staff. They know the material for which they are responsible, and are able to provide signposts to what is more appropriately curated by others. Many legitimate users will always need help in navigating the complexities of interoperability.

4.8 This approach, and its key concepts - 'curation', 'holding' and 'accessing' - is the way to desensitise that traditional bone of contention between levels, data-exchange, and the linked topic of how archival responsibilities are distributed. It also helps to start from a user-perspective, where the interest is in knowing where to find existing material, and where to send new material, in turn requiring clarity about who has the primary archival responsibility for what. From a system perspective:

• 'curation' is the primary archival responsibility, applying to material collected in programmes of work at national or local level, and covering its preservation, ordering, indexing and publicising
• 'holding' applies to copies or summaries of original material curated at another level, but needing to be held on account of its significance for primary tasks, and
• 'accessing' other systems refers to indexes held at either end, with or without facilitating metadata and electronic gateways (see Section 5).

There is a joint responsibility on 'holders' (who are also users) and 'curators' to ensure there are mechanisms for exchanging or transferring information between levels. Similarly, an archive-holding responsibility carries with it a duty to exchange. In this way, the national record will hold copies of local material that contributes to the retrieval of national overviews by period, subject or multiple locations, and the local record will hold copies of national material that throws particular light upon the local scene. This formula must be applied wisely, in the service of functions already defined, not as an act of indiscriminate self-definition. The shared objective should be the possibility of retrieving anything or everything from either level, either directly because it is there, or remotely through well established linkages. As data-cleaning and modes of exchange become more sophisticated, the operation ought to appear more seamless to the user: indeed, apparent seamlessness ought to be the objective.

4.9 Against this background, the survey of systems has identified some difficulties across the national-local interface, many of which have already been cited in discussion of the Descriptive Map (Section 2). Finite national or regional projects can create databases which will reduce in value if not maintained or if dispersed amongst local records where continuing enhancement will inevitably be uneven. Examples are some of the Wetlands projects and aspects of the Monuments Protection Programme. Proposals for the future of databases created by finite projects need to be an integral part of planning, and a condition of funding where grant is involved, perhaps recognising that there are two kinds of projects. Some should stand as the view of the time, capable of comparison with other or later work, such as the MARS project of 1995, due for repetition in 2015. For others, the added value of accumulating information and interpretation might justify continuing maintenance and / or specific arrangements for data-exchange, though this would have to be positively identified and kept under review against clear objectives.

4.10 More crudely, projects are being devised at one level without making any provision for data exchange or deposit with the other. This is probably a greater problem at national level because more local systems are potentially affected. The Countryside Agency's HLF-funded Local Heritage Initiative has already been cited in relation to local SMRs, a project clearly conceived with little if any awareness of their relevance. Proposals for a single national database for the Portable Antiquities Programme will be a superficial 'hit' for the politics of access and no source of long-term sustainable value if it effectively by-passes the local SMRs and museums artefacts systems, with their essential capability (when properly resourced) for consolidating otherwise largely anecdotal information. An illustration of the reverse situation is the series of Extensive Urban Surveys, funded by English Heritage and mostly being undertaken at county level in close association with local SMRs. EUS produce syntheses, written and cartographic, as well as enhanced SMR entries, and these must be an important accumulating resource for urban historical and archaeological studies: such types of study ought to be accessible as a class through the relevant NMR.

4.11 Specialised record systems present problems for both levels of general records, which have an interest in material otherwise difficult to obtain or less expertly compiled by generalists. National records would be particularly interested in the overview and local records in the potential for enhancing information about the examples in their area. The extent to which it would be desirable to 'hold' copies or merely have a bilateral understanding about 'access' might vary according to the case and the standards of quality that could be assured. It is also clear from the mapping exercise that the existence of some specialist systems is not known at national and / or local levels, and that some of them have difficulties in making their information available to others, for technical or policy reasons. This applies particularly to those specialist 'systems' consisting of dispersed personal databases, which also have their problems of co-ordination and communication.

4.12 Management records systems are another category of specialised system. Those run by the National Trust in England and Scotland are accumulating a series of definitive archaeological and vernacular architectural property surveys. Putting aside the problems of confidentiality often associated with this kind of information, it is usually valuable for local SMRs but often cannot be accessioned to them for lack of resources. There is a similar situation over the records held by English Heritage, CADW and Historic Scotland for scheduled monuments, kept current and made increasingly valuable by regular reports from Field Monument Wardens.

4.13 Overall, the survey encountered complaints of material not being made available to one level of general record by another, due to combinations of lack of resources, technical obstacles, policy or assertion of Intellectual Property Rights. There is a need to look carefully at the range of problems and issues, in order to identify which are caused by matters solvable in terms of the framework and procedures being proposed here, and which will remain intractable until the resources issue is addressed.

National Interfaces

4.14 There are interesting developments in relationships between the national-level records. In England, the merger between RCHME and English Heritage has meant that the English NMR is now being described as the record system to support the enhanced functions of the combined organisation. How this develops, and with what impact upon the development of national - local networks, will be keenly watched over the next year or so. In Wales, the extended national data-base index (ENDEX) is seen as the mechanism by which double-handling of data by NMRW, Cadw and the National Museums and Galleries of Wales can be minimised, with the four Welsh Archaeological Trusts also part of the arrangement. ENDEX has existed as a proposal for several years, and does in some ways represent the old-style of comprehensive system of systems described at the beginning of this section. However, it probably has more chance of working on the smaller scale of Wales, and it will be interesting to see how its future development is influenced by the concepts being advanced in this report. Historic Scotland's policy has been to minimise duplication of information holding and facilitate access to its own and others' digital data. To that end there is an open bilateral link between NMRS and Historic Scotland's datasets, although there are limitations on the availability of the most current information, for example, the regular reports of wardens' visits to review site condition and interpretation. The mapping survey has already noted problems of interfacing between the general NMRs and the systems maintained for management purposes by the national conservation organisations.

4.15 There are also difficulties, in England at least, about shared information amongst the national statutory amenity societies. This is partly a matter of accessibility to the recently computerised statutory lists of historic buildings, about which discussions are current with DCMS. It is perhaps also raises the issue of whether it would be economical to devise a common administrative information system capable of avoiding double-handling of referred applications and achieving their correct allocation in one step.

Local Interfaces

4.16 These can be considered under two broad headings. There are those arising between general systems located within different levels of variously organised local scenes, where the tensions are often territorial and the problems similar to those encountered at the national / local interface. Then there are issues of communication between different types of record serving different purposes within the same locality.

4.17 Local general record systems are usually archaeological in scope and planning-orientated, with only a minority properly serving the whole historic environment and even fewer able to serve its full range of uses. Amongst these, a recent assessment of 75 English SMRs showed a pattern of often uncertain relationships between systems at the county and district levels of two-tier local government (Baker 1999a). This is made more complex by the existence of National Park systems in a few of the former and Urban Archaeological Databases in several of the latter. In the Unitary Authorities that have appeared since the mid-1980s, the efficacy of systems depends considerably upon critical mass, and, where this is deficient, mostly in metropolitan areas, upon the willingness of others to maintain politically fragile joint arrangements. Coverage, however, is complete, unlike in Scotland, where a recent assessment (Baker 1999b) noted the existence of some gaps, the threat of others and several 'near' SMRs. A notable Scottish feature is the acceptance by some small rural Councils that their record can be more cost-effectively run for them by a neighbour in tandem with its own. However, joint arrangements by which the West of Scotland Archaeology Service based on Glasgow City runs a single system for a dozen mainly urban Councils in the area of the former Strathclyde Regional Council, appear to be increasingly unstable. Wales presents a significantly different picture, with the local records now firmly based in four regional Archaeological Trusts who provide government-funded advisory services to the Unitary Authorities in their areas.

4.18 The issue of regional record systems naturally raises itself with political devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in progress or on the agenda, and the development of regional institutions proceeding apace in England. It has already happened in Wales for archaeological systems firmly located with regional Trusts, each providing planning advice to several Unitary Councils from an external position. This may put obstacles in the way of creating similar systems for historic buildings on the assumption that they would grow out of needs perceived by Conservation Officers within a much larger number of Unitary Councils. Separate archaeological and buildings systems in the Trust and the Council respectively would unhelpfully reinforce a divided approach to the conservation of the historic environment. Equally, an extension of the remotely provided information service would be unhelpfully separated from professional advice on historic buildings within the client Council. The problems may be solvable with the greatest benefit only through the development of a truly distributed and interoperable system shared by all. In Scotland, internal regionalisation was presumably taken off the political agenda by the reorganisation of 1996, but the Highlands, the Islands, the central belt and the lowlands do present significantly different challenges for record keeping over differences of terrain, density of heritage and demand from users. In England, there is pressure for useful local collaborations on a regional scale, but truly regional records would be unlikely to precede the abolition of the county tier of local government. If that did happen, and networking solutions were not available, the better aspects of the current Scottish model (see above, Section 4.17) may help inform solutions to a new range of problems of critical mass posed by much smaller authorities at the existing District level.

4.19 Within each locality, arrangements for different kinds of record systems vary widely, and it is beyond the scope of this project to provide a comprehensive analysis of all variants throughout the United Kingdom. For the purposes of this scoping exercise, it was decided first to look at the systems in one locality, and second to identify some of the general issues arising from the strengths and weaknesses of their inter-relationships.

4.20 Bedfordshire was chosen for its convenient proximity, pre-existing knowledge of it, and reassurance from the 1998 ALGAO / RCHME survey of SMRs that its arrangements are not significantly untypical. The information systems are those run by the planning services, the museums, the Bedfordshire County Council's Archaeology Service (BCAS) and the County Record Office (CRO). The local government structure within the historic county consists of Luton Unitary and Bedfordshire County Councils, the latter a two-tier system with Councils for Bedford Borough, Mid-Bedfordshire and South Bedfordshire; Luton had been a fourth District until reorganisation in April 1996. Elements in other areas but not present in Bedfordshire include Urban Archaeological Databases separate from SMRs, and National Parks with their own SMRs or wider environmental databases.

4.21 This multiplicity of authorities presents a mixed picture of systems coverage.

• After 1996, the exigencies of critical mass and cost-effectiveness enabled retention of the county-wide County Record Office with its excellent and thorough cataloguing systems, rechristened as the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Record Office.
• The two registered Museums had always been at District level, with the historic county divided into two mutually agreed collecting areas cutting across political divisions.
• The County Sites and Monuments Record had been developed from 1971 containing historic buildings and supporting county-wide (except Luton) advisory services on the conservation of the buried and built historic environment. It was formally renamed the Historic Environment Record (HER) in 1992. After April 1996, Luton Unitary Authority took its own part of the HER and maintains it separately, though it has only about 500 items. Despite holding 25 years' casework records, the logistics of distance and other organisational factors largely prevent its use by the Conservation Officers appointed in Bedford Borough and Mid Bedfordshire District after the virtual disbanding of the county specialist team in the tensions surrounding local government reorganisation in 1996. Neither of these have their own equivalent supporting record systems.
• The County Council has retained an Archaeological Officer who continues to serve the three Districts using the HER.
• Bedfordshire County Archaeology Service has two information systems, a (non-ceramic) Bedfordshire Artefacts Typology, and a Ceramics Type Series. Both were built up from the late 1970s on the basis of several large-scale field projects, but their future development as definitive local systems is threatened by cuts, imminent externalisation and the difficulty of ensuring other Units' predominantly commercial contract projects both use it and feed into it.

4.22 The coverage of the traditional individual systems over their intended territory is one matter; interconnections through information flows that bridge administrative gaps between aspects of the whole historic environment usually attract less attention, though are no less important. At the level of traditional excavating archaeology, project archives go from BCAS to Bedford or Luton Museum as appropriate, and the two BCAS information systems are both recognised and used by them. Information goes from the two HERs into the planning process and the results are fed back into them at least at index level. Landscape archaeology and local history have involved extensive collaboration between the HER and the CRO, with the former taking material from the latter to add to its own. Syntheses and analyses by subjects, periods and location (now no longer produced) are of value to the users of both systems. Matters are weakest, and especially after 1996, for the historic built environment, with the loss of facilities to maintain a county-wide information system directly supporting conservation planning casework. This is exacerbating the continuing difficulty, at least in the perception of users, that information about historic buildings can be found in at least three different places, the HER, the CRO and the District Council.

4.23 Several lessons can be drawn from this sketch and what is known to happen elsewhere from the results of recent assessments of local Sites and Monuments Records in England and Scotland. They can be usefully presented through the operational framework devised at the outset of this project; several have already arisen in other contexts during this project.

(a) Whether or not intrinsically appropriate, the familiar division of the historic environment between 'built' and 'buried', covered by different sets of specialists operating at different levels of local government, is reinforced by arrangements for information systems. They have developed largely for archaeological aspects because, for reasons that need separate discussion, much building conservation has been traditionally insensitive to documentation as an intrinsic part of the process. Exactly what pattern of records exists outside the handful of county-level SMRs that also include buildings and service building conservation is uncertain, and needs to be the subject of investigation so that gaps can be identified and ideas cross-fertilise.

(b) The conservation process, defined as a sequence of stages involving awareness, management and feedback, is necessarily split between types and levels of organisational structures at local level. The information systems that should support and benefit from all of these will be variously distributed between types of host organisation, taking their character from their host. Systems based in arts / leisure / heritage groupings will tend to be different in structure and outlook compared with those in a planning / environmental context, though the driving imperatives of the latter give 'management' a general priority over 'feedback' unless specific funding for access and outreach can be secured.

(c) Information management is much more than an issue of systems; it is also people and purposes. Several kinds of systems existing in the locality represent the different specialist needs of planning conservation, museum curation, fieldwork investigation and archival management. All need an expert human interface for their information to become useful either for their specialised purposes or for their wider significance to be conveyed to an interested generalist public (though some are too small to support one). While the value of that information can be increased by making linkages between the different specialist holdings, this is not necessarily achieved by making them into one big system; rather, it is a matter of identifying common interests and maximising interoperability. Bedfordshire has two good (if vulnerable) examples: BCAS' artefact systems give and receive added value from their connections with understaffed museum collections; the HER recycles material from the Record Office, but in so doing provides it in formats useful to users of both systems. Both examples illustrate the scope for future convergence through compatible indexing and metadata standards, always assuming the existence of expert managing interpreters to serve the primary functions. However, there is technical work to be done if the vision expressed by NMRS is to be realised, creating a network of related information sources as the basis for future projects, including links to museums sources, finds databases and place-name databases, and to other relevant environmental and historical sources. A particular problem is the primary documentary material in County Record Offices, which tends to have different indexing and retrieval requirements compared with sites and buildings, though there may be scope for searching on-line beyond standard indexes through use of externally generated keywords.

(d) However clear the analysis of objectives and process, operational success depends upon their embodiment in appropriate organisational structures, rather than inappropriate or inimical ones. Insofar as the management of information about the historic environment is a public responsibility, this affects the structure of public administration. The main issue to be highlighted here, certainly in England, is the advance of regional government and the progressive erosion of the two-tier county-district system by the creation of unitary councils. On the one hand, these have scope for removing some of the barriers to effective information management, for example with the new unitary council of Hereford's creation of a comprehensive Historic Environment Record. This, however, is likely to be viable for its full range of potential functions in the critical mass of its area, unlike the geographically much smaller new unitary council of Luton. Unless there can be broad consensus over a strategy for the development and co-ordination of local environmental information management systems of all kinds, so as to create useful operational partnerships between disparate organisations, there is a risk of compounding present difficulties and divisions as the form of local government changes.

5. Information Management

5.1 HEIRNET wishes to investigate how a shared approach to information management and access might promote the understanding, use and appreciation of the historic environment. This section will develop the discussion of Information Management presented in the Operational Framework (Appendix I) in order to explore the range of technical solutions available.

5.2 The solutions must articulate the technical vision whilst being well-founded in practical, financial, historical and political realities. They must take account of the disparate needs of users of heritage information, and of the fact that heritage information systems must also interface with systems outside the worlds of conservation and archaeology, and with those beyond the local or even national level. Finally, they must recognise both the costs and benefits of enabling access and take account of the perceived and actual roles of individual HEIRs identified in the mapping exercise.

Information creation, storage, dissemination and re-use

5.3 In the Operational Framework (Appendix I) we defined informationmanagement as comprising a set of four inter-linked stages: creation, storage, dissemination and re-use. Most primary data are created locally, whilst the other stages may be at a regional, national or international scale. The stages are rarely combined in one organisation, and individual users may pose questions at local, regional, national or international levels. Information about the historic environment is dispersed around the world, inside archives, libraries, and museums. It is a daunting task to embark upon a search of historic information resources because the user may have to travel large distances just to discover what sorts of information already exist. The inaccessibility of information is seen as one of the principal barriers to effective, creative, and accurate syntheses across regions, countries and time periods.

5.4 Different users have different needs. From the viewpoint of information management we identified two broad classes:

• Those, such as most professional and academic users, that can be directly satisfied through standard interrogation of information in appropriate formats, perhaps supplemented by associated interpretative glossaries that are effectively part of the same system.
• Those, such as schools or public users, that will need to have information selected and represented before it can properly serve their purposes.

Resource Discovery

5.5 Computer networks are important organisational facilitators of effective information flows. The single most effective means by which information today may be published, accessed, and linked together on a global scale is the World Wide Web (WWW). By itself, however, the WWW does not necessarily enable effective access to information which is held in diverse and dispersed information resources. The WWW is currently evolving towards a framework of machine-driven information retrieval, wherein significant bodies of extant knowledge are offered up from existing databases and simultaneously searched by users many miles from B and potentially lacking any knowledge of B the originating system. Information on the Web varies in form, from static pages of text and imagery right through to web-accessible database engines, where the 'pages' are assembled from one or more databases in a real-time response to user queries or actions. In enabling valid resources to be located quickly and efficiently, we need to find means of representing information such that automated systems may deal with it directly. The problem is compounded because information seekers may wish to include many disparate sources of information in their searches. The situation is summarised concisely by the US Geological Survey:

"Better search mechanisms are needed because of the size and diversity of information that people would like to take into account. The Internet has huge amounts of content itself, and often acts as a pointer mechanism to off-line media, but lacks basic agreements on how to tag information objects so that they can be found. Content Owners want their products to be found by all potentially interested seekers. The only recourse is to somehow acquire advertising space from all of the intermediaries" (US Geological Survey 1998).

Web-based search mechanisms may be categorised according to three broad headings: automated search engines using crawlers and robots, gateways providing access to classified network resources, and indexed catalogues of resources.

5.6 In practice automated search engines rarely provide an effective means of resource discovery. Designers of web crawlers and other software agents are frustrated because "the software agent can only deal with bits and pieces of Internet content that happen to be in text form and is constrained by a lack of distributed search mechanisms" (US Geological Survey, 1998). Where users have very specific requirements and can articulate them in a way which the search engine can interpret, the results may be adequate (e.g. "Find me the web site for English Heritage"). However, users with less specific demands (e.g. "I want to know more about Stonehenge") are invariably swamped by large numbers of 'hits' of variable but unknown quality. Search engines are also unable to differentiate between categories of users and cannot provide a level of assistance appropriate to the level of experience or prior knowledge of the user.

5.7 At the most basic level an "Access to Network Resources" (ANR) web gateway may simply comprise a hot-linked list of web sites organised according to the source or type of information held (e.g. "Museums" or "Stonehenge web sites"). In this it may present little more than the list of sites that might result from an automated search (and some gateways are constructed semi-automatically) except that links may be subject to some form of quality control to weed out mis-hits or material judged to be of inferior quality. Sites may vary according to geographical coverage, the extent to which resources have been validated and described, and completeness. Gateways can be developed with specific target audiences in mind, such as 'general public', 'schools', or 'professional/ HE researcher'. They can also introduce a level of quality control and 'information mitigation/interpretation' appropriate to the target audience.

5.8 In addition to the above, indexed catalogues normally provide a means of carrying our controlled searches of specified fields in an organised database. Such catalogues may permit searching of a single resource (e.g. Canmore-WEB, which allows users to conduct structuredqueries of the NMRS), or integrated searching of distributed resources (e.g. Aquarelle, or the AHDS gateway, where users can search simultaneously across digitalresources in archaeology, history, literature, performing and visual arts). It is worth noting that the distinction between gateways and indexed catalogues is disappearing as gateways increasingly use indexing tools and metadata to index resources (e.g. ARGE) and indexed catalogues provide a brokering function including metadata catalogue records for external web sites (e.g. ADAM/VADS, the visual arts catalogue and gateway).

Several respondents to the HEIRNET project identified that there was a need to provide information on what exists in order to avoid inadvertent duplication and maximise interoperability. Many identified a requirement for a common gateway to HEIRs indicating the extent to which access can be 'drilled down' through metadata to index data to remote access.

Interoperability

5.9 The project has identified a large and diverse number of organisations which hold heritage information resources (see Appendix II). Most are held in some computer-based form and several are already available via the Internet whilst in other cases the intention is to make them available online in the near future. Some are available as indexed catalogues. Several are used by multiple users groups, and in some cases the actual or potential users extend beyond the heritage environment. Existing systems are held in a wide variety of hardware and software applications, utilising a variety of data models. It is neither realistic nor necessarily desirable to impose a single UK-wide system.

5.10 It is possible to conceive of a model in which each historic environment information provider develops its own self-contained and independent online resource. Indeed, this model is basically a continuation of the current situation. Under such a model, any number of 'service providers' might set themselves up in order to deliver information. The sites would be indexed by search engines and could be linked by ANR gateways. The advantage of such an approach is simplicity and the lack of need for any strategic vision or control. The limitations are, however, numerous:

• A user in search of information on the historic environment is forced to visit each service provider in turn
• A user in search of information which is not contiguous with the collecting policies and geographical boundaries of a single service provider will have to search across a number of service providers
• Providers of information will duplicate resources held by other bodies. They may also have to undertake cumbersome methods of data exchange in order to try to maintain comprehensive holdings.
• Some data creators must duplicate information in multiple presentations for different user groups.

Technical solutions must proceed on the basis that there will continue to be multiple providers of information about the historic environment, each operating their own systems, but that it is desirable that users are enabled to search multiple resources with single queries. The technical solutions therefore require interoperability.

5.11 By adopting an interoperating model in which any number of service providers are linked together in such a manner that data creators need only provide their data once for it to become available, these fundamental problems are ameliorated. Under this new model, potential users can cast their search at an appropriate geographical scope, e.g. at county, national, or British Isles level. Where a number of service providers are able to provide access to the same data users may also choose to visit individual service providers for 'value-added' services that individual providers bring to the data. One service provider might, for example, become well known for their map-based search engine, whilst another might be favoured for its intuitive interface. Users may also choose, or be directed to, interfaces appropriate to their level of prior knowledge. Some sites may be targeted at the public or educational market, for example; others might choose to focus on the academic and professional market. Interoperability is therefore seen as the key which allows diverse and dispersed heritage information resources to be made available for effective Internet access.

5.12 Interoperability exists at a basic level whenever two or more information systems can be queried simultaneously. However, unless the two systems share identical record structures and data descriptions such queries are unlikely to yield meaningful results. Full interoperability rests upon three things. Firstly there is a need to establish communications protocols which will allow users to query distributed computer systems. Secondly, these distributed systems must employ metadata which can be quickly and systematically searched by computers and presented in an understandable form to users. Metadata can be used to summarize the content of archives, libraries, museums, and even publications, so users can scan their holdings relatively easily and either download the information directly, or at least more carefully plan the itinerary required to gather the relevant pieces of information. Thirdly, the distributed systems need to apply agreed terminology controls through data documentation and content standards in order that users can retrieve comparable returns from diffuse data resources. Such contents standards include the wide range of thesauri which are employed in describing the historic environment.

Communications protocols

5.13 For an historic environment information infrastructure to succeed, whether in and of itself or in the wider context of which the historic environment is but a part, a common protocol for interoperability is required. Such a protocol allows a single user-specified query issued at a client (or commonly 'gateway') to be simultaneously passed to any number of distributed servers, or 'targets', where it is mapped into the local data structure. Such searches can be 'platform independent', in that they can work across different hardware and software applications, so long as there is an agreed 'profile', or mapping of the query to the individual data structures. The combined search results are then returned to the user and can be presented as the outcome of a single local search. Fortunately, the broader domain of information science has long recognised this requirement, and a number of avenues have been pursued in the search for a truly useful solution. This project has identified the Z39.50 communications protocol already used by a number of HEIRs, providing the best solution for interoperability (Appendix III).

Metadata

5.14 Having identified a communications protocol it is technically possible for users to search across multiple service providers. That search, however, will produce results of limited utility unless service providers have previously identified a number of key indexing fields which will cover the range of queries that users will require. The data required in order for a user to find information is here described as resource discovery metadata. Metadata is 'data about data', or the information needed to communicate sensibly about information (in the same way that metalanguage is the discourse linguists use to communicate about language). Metadata has three main purposes. Firstly, it allows the nature of a body of information to be assessed without having to access the data themselves. Secondly, it allows a user to locate a piece of information. Thirdly, it allows similar bodies of information to be grouped or linked together.

5.15 Thus, the information about information communicated through metadata is generally:

• the nature of information (such as that it is about stone tools)
• the location of information (such as that it is viewable online at the ADS web site)
• existence of similar information (such as in the British Museum)

One of the best examples of metadata is the MAchine Readable Cataloging (MARC) metadata scheme (Network Development and MARC Standards Office 1997) which has evolved into one of the most comprehensive and widely adopted of metadata schemes worldwide. By using similar cataloguing terms from a scheme like MARC across library collections, it becomes relatively easy to make computer systems search more than one catalogue in response to a user's query. The very cataloguing terms used in the search are then a form of metadata, allowing for basic description of the data, its location, and the existence of similar information to be discovered. A catalogue entry may vary in complexity from the equivalent of a library record identifying title, author, publisher, date of publication and shelving details, to a keyword-indexed abstract that enables a thorough search and assessment of the results of this search.

5.16 Metadata can also document everything the user needs to know in deciding if the resource is usable. For example, charges levied, or copyright restrictions can be two pieces of metadata that describe a resource, and which potentially affect whether or not the user really wants to spend time physically retrieving it. The language of a resource is also suitable for metadata catalogue. A document may well be just what you need, but if it is in Gaelic and the user only reads English and French, it will be of little value. Metadata documentation for satellite images, for example, might include the date of collection, the type of sensors used, spatial coverage, amount of cloud cover, resolution, costs, and copyright information - in short, everything that a data user might wish/need to know in order to use the information contained within the data set.

5.17 Behind all this apparently seamless information, description and discovery lies a complex suite of technical problems including speed, accuracy, precision, and completeness of the results. The answer to many of these technical problems is standardised metadata entries. If all pieces of information have an author or group of authors (in the sense that texts are written, photographs are taken, maps are digitised, and databases are constructed usually by an identifiable person or people), and this metadata is presented in standardised, machine-searchable ways, everyone can find the information they want better and faster.

5.18 To describe historic environment information adequately (with the goal of making it faster and easier for other people to discover it) we have to understand what people will want to know about it. What people will want to know determines what types of metadata will be important, and what people will want to know about it will change as they become more familiar with what is available. For example, a fieldwork project may wish to examine the prehistoric ritual mounds of northern England. The investigator would want a metadata index that identified information about similar sites in other parts of the British Isles, Northwest Europe, the Americas or anywhere that prehistoric ritual mounds had been recorded. After locating a region with information pertaining to the research interests/requirements the user would want more detailed information. Perhaps the user would like to know what types of artifacts to expect from mounds in Cumbria, or what satellite imagery was available for Yorkshire. The metadata about this increased level of detail should still be general enough that the user does not have to search each piece of data individually. By way of analogy, once a reader knows there is a library section on 'Archaeology', a reader should not have to walk to each individual book, take it off the shelf, and glance through the table of contents to find its relevance. The site or region's location is certainly not the only important starting point for most archaeologists. Also critical is the temporal affiliation of the site. Is it occupied in the Mesolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, or from 3000 BP? Metadata entries should cover all the basic information a user needs to decide if a resource is relevant.

5.19 At this most basic level (called, confusingly, 'high-level' metadata) the following types of information are recorded about each piece of information:

• Who created the data
• Geographical references of the data
• Period or temporal scope of the data
• Language
• Format
• Who owns the data
• How to obtain the data
• Title
• Date of data creation

This basic level of metadata is currently being defined by broad international groups working on what they term 'core description'. There are a large number of metadata initiatives of value to archaeologists, whether developed for a wider community or for archaeology specifically. These initiatives range from extremely detailed and specific metadata systems such as the Federal Geographic Data Committee's (FGDC) Content Guidelines for Digital Geospatial Metadata to the much simpler and more generalised Dublin Core (Appendix IV).

Terminology control

5.20 Communications protocols allow researchers to look for resources across distributed databases; metadata provides a standardised means of identifying the core attributes which researchers might use to carry out their search. However, the results of such a search will only be as good as the metadata that has been employed. Effective metadata demands the use of thesauri and terminology control. For the user to locate resources of interest they will need to know which search terms to employ, and how those terms have been applied across the collections they are searching.

5.21 The Dublin core permits the cataloguer to use any number of standard 'schemes', or thesauri, to describe each of the Dublin core fields. However the effectiveness of searches which cross over records employing different schemes will then depend on the extent to which schemes can then be mapped to each other. A number of thesauri have been developed for use in British Archaeology, although their scope tends to reflect the political boundaries of the originating body and there are difficulties in locating thesauri which have been used throughout the British Isles. There is also a need to define the metadata that needs to be recorded in order to allow re-use of digital data. The AHDS series of Guides to Good Practice is addressing this need. The ADS has already published Guides in GIS (Gillings and Wise 1999) and Aerial Photography (Bewley et al 1999); further guides on geophysics, CAD, excavation and fieldwork (http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/ project/goodguides/excavation) , and VRML, are in the pipeline. A detailed discussion of thesauri is beyond the scope of this report, although extracts from a peer-reviewed list maintained by the ADS is supplied as Appendix VI.

The stated objective of FISHEN is the building of national standards and terminology, and making them available for inclusion in information systems. The work of FISHEN includes the INSCRIPTION wordlist standard (including thesauri), the MIDAS data content standard, Terminology and Concept mapping software and Thesaurus management software developed in-house for the English Heritage Data Standards Unit.

Recommendation 4 in Strategies for Digital Data (Condron et al 1999) noted that "Data creation standards are essential to facilitate the exchange of information"; Recommendation 5 continues: "National bodies should continue to encourage the use of standards for projects they fund. Similar guidelines need to be built into project briefs for developer-funded work". The HEIRNET mapping exercise also highlighted the need to persuade grant-aiders, such as the HLF, that (a) where appropriate an information system is an integral necessity and (b) that grant-aided projects must conform to certain reasonable minimum requirements of functionality and interoperability. These recommendations are also taken up in the conclusions to this project (Section 6).

Dissemination options

5.22 Given agreed communications protocols, metadata indexing, and terminology control, on-line indexed catalogues can provide a number of technical options for access to HEIRS. These are capable of responding to the range of local, regional, national, and international user queries identified above. They can support map-based and period based queries, and can respond to the needs of both public and scholarly access. The options concern the level of online availability of the metadata and underlying data, and the level of interoperability between distributed systems.

5.23 As far as availability is concerned an appropriate model might involve three levels of remote access, to:

a. metadata that characterises the nature of the system's holdings in the form of types of data-field held, but cannot supply more specific information

b. a metadata-based basic index listing all the records (e.g at monument level)

c. detailed information behind that index, at least distinguishing what has and what has not been digitised, and generally providing online access to detailed text fields.

5.24 For interoperability there are three levels of distribution of data and metadata: served, brokered, and linked. The ADS catalogue, ArchSearch provides examples which illustrate the range of possibilities:

Where a resource is served, both the catalogue'metadata' records and the resource- the'dataare held on a central server. The ADS catalogue holds metadata records which describe the digital excavation archives which are available for down-loading by registered users.

Where a resource is brokered, the metadata is held on the local server, but this indicates the existence of a distributed resource at a remote site. The resource itself may be in digital form but could equally comprise a paper or museum archive. This option may therefore be appropriate where only basic metadata is in digital form (see above). However, where the resource is itself digital then it is possible to provide a live link from metadata to data (e.g. the link to related resource in Canmore-Web from the NMRS metadata records in the ADS catalogue).

Where a resource is linked, both the metadata and the resource are held at a remote'target' site but can be queried at the server gateway. Proposals to link the online Portable Antiquities Database, SCRAN, the NMRS and the ADS Catalogue provide an example of this type of option.

5.25 A served approach may be appropriate where the owner of the resource does not wish to provide access to the resource themselves, perhaps for political, technical or financial reasons. It is particularly appropriate where the creator / owner no longer has a direct interest in a resource which is static and unchanging, such as a completed research project. It may also be advisable where the creator / owner wishes the resource to be made publicly available but is unable or unwillingto support the continued use of the resource (e.g. through dealing with user queries) or is unable to take responsibility for its long term preservation. Copyright can be an issue but may be retained by the owner who assigns the service provider a licence to distribute the data. The owner is unlikely to use this option where the resource is seen as having the potential to generate a future income stream. For the service provider a served option is technically straightforward as both metadata and data are held on the local server, although they will need to be satisfied that the resource does not raise issues of legal liability for them.

5.26 A brokered option may be appropriate where the information owner does not wish to hand over responsibility for a resource, but where there may be advantages to them in providing an access route via a remote catalogue. This approach will be favoured, therefore, where the owner has a continued intellectual or financial interest in the resource and wishes to maximise its usage, but for technical or financial reasons does not wish to become a 'target' site. Thus an organisation with a secure web server and the ability to provide online 24-hour access might facilitate direct access to the resource on its own server, but by the provision of metadata records to a remote system can make the resource available for simultaneous searching with other resources. Thus Canmore-Web provides direct access to the NMRS whilst RCAHMS also provides the ADS with metadata records which permit simultaneous searching of the NMRS alongside other resources such as the RCHME Excavation Index and the Radiocarbon Index of Britain and Ireland supplied by the CBA. Direct hot links use the unique NMRS record numbers to allow users to 'drill-down' from the metadata to the data held in Edinburgh.

Such data can therefore be dynamic so that detailed records can be updated and expanded so long as the linking field is not invalidated. However, the option is not really appropriate for dynamic systems where the metadata is itself subject to change, such as where data are reclassified or new records are added. In these cases the metadata must be periodically resupplied. Experience with the ADS catalogue to date has indicated that the loading and reloading of metadata records is a time-consuming process and so this option is not recommended as a long term solution for dynamic resources. The provision of metadata records can also be expensive. Experience gained by the partners in the Accessing Scotland's Past project has demonstrated that where suitable technical expertise is available and where there is a straightforward mapping between the data structure of the owner and the metadata catalogue fields of the service provider the process can be automated and large numbers of metadata records can be generated at minimal cost. However, where data structures are incompatible or where the quality of source data is uneven, then the process of amending and cleaning the source data so that metadata records can be generated can be very time-consuming.

The capital costs of this option may also be significant in that many organisations will need to set up a separate computer system. For RCAHMS this demanded the purchase of a stand-aloneweb server, a firewall, and high bandwidth Internet access. They do not need, however, to establish themselves as a Z39.50 target.

5.27 A linked option may be appropriate where it is cost-effective for owners to provide on-line access to resources themselves, but also wish to make their resources available from a number of additional access points. This option is also preferable where the metadata are themselves dynamic (as in the case of NMRs or SMRs, or Museums inventories) as changes to the data are immediately reflected in what is made publicly accessible. On the other hand the costs of establishing an online Z39.50 target may outweigh the advantages for many organisations. For meaningful results to be returned this option does not overcome the expense of data cleaning and metadata creation highlighted above. Experience with the AHDS Z39.50 gateway suggests that where the distributed resources are diverse less functionality can be provided at the gateway than is available from each of the service provider's individual catalogues. Thus, for example, searches for archaeological resources issued at the AHDS gateway are limited to text-based keyword searching, whereas the ADS catalogue can support period or map-based queries. Nonetheless, organisations which possess Z39.50 target capability can make their data available to an unlimited number of gateways, each with different strengths, at little or no extra cost to themselves. This represents the optimal approach for supporting different user groups whilst avoiding duplication of records as different metadata fields or schemes might be selected for searches appropriate to a schools audience for example.

5.28 In all cases where disparate resources are combined, whether on a single server, or through searches of distributed records, the results will only be as good as the level of terminological control allows. Period, for example, is recorded differently in different resources. Where a recognised standard such as MIDAS has been followed then it is technically possible (but not yet implemented) to use thesauri to provide mappings between the different data sets. This is an area which requires further investigation for interoperability to become a reality. In any case it is essential that users are made aware of the limitations of the search mechanisms and are given training in making effective queries, and interpreting the results.

5.29 Mediation of data to encourage its accessibility is a particular issue for the general public and users from primary and secondary education, but it can also apply to the academic and professional user group. Several respondents to the HEIRNET project asked if basic unmediated archive-type data was genuinely useful, how useful and to how many people? Reformatting basic data so that it is remotely retrievable in full depth of detail must surely be so cost-ineffective that it can only realistically be done by building in the right formatting at the initial archive-creating stage. Other respondents identified the need to separate out issues of direct access from 'within the HEIR world' to validated but otherwise 'unpresented' data on and across existing systems; from external access to 'presented' / interpreted information.

Conclusion

5.30 In conclusion, by pursuing a strategic vision of interoperability, UK information providers will maintain maximum flexibility and functionality in proving access to historic environment information resources. A series of Z39.50 gateways will provide a variety of access points to underlying data which is held only once. The vision is implicitly non-hierarchical as the gateways are information nodes defined by their target audiences. They point at any number of overlapping targets, some of which may themselves be gateways. Organisations may join the network at any level, by:

• allowing an existing service provider to serve both data and metadata
• using an existing service provider as a metadata broker, but retaining the data locally, either digitally (and possibly making it available online) or on paper
• becoming a Z39.50 target and serving data and metadata themselves
• defining a target audience and becoming a Z39.50 gateway themselves.

6 Discussion and Recommendations

6.1 This final section introduces the recommendations by reviewing the deliverables of the brief in the light of perspectives gained during the project.

6.2 Five deliverables were listed in two broadly linked categories. Three covered 'mapping', seeking to identify: (a) all the key information systems that relate to the UK's historic environment, providing details of their defined purpose, as well as their perceived role and functions;
(b) aspects of the UK's historic environment which are not currently covered within existing information systems, or where existing information could be re-used for other purposes, e.g. education;
(c) aspects of the UK's historic environment which are covered by more than one current information system and where economies of effort might be encouraged.

Two were developmental, requiring:
(d) suggestions how information systems relating to the historic environment of the UK might develop, bearing in mind the need to enable access and enhance public benefit;
(e) the articulation of a 'strategic vision' for information systems that relate to the UK's historic environment.

6.3 These requirements reflect the concerns about information management that brought HEIRNET into being, perceptions of an accelerating and significantly uncoordinated proliferation of systems, powered by rapidly developing technology and potentially distorted by selective funding opportunities from the HLF, commercial and European sources. It was logical to seek a 'mapping', as a basis for avoiding duplication, identifying gaps and promoting 'interoperability'. Yet (a) - (c) imply a finite 'landscape' of systems variously combining period, subject and place, manageable as a fully articulated set. Also, in (d) and (e), systems and coverage subordinate uses: education is presented as an opportunity to reuse primary information in secondary forms for other purposes; enabling access and enhancing public benefit is something to 'bear in mind' while devising broad system-related developmental strategies.

6.4 Thus the deliverables also reflect the tensions between established approaches to information management for archaeology and historic buildings and current pressures for change. The latter derive from perceptions of a wider historic environment and its widening range of uses; they have recently gained impetus from policies for increasing public access to cultural resources, transcending 'elitism' and pursuing 'social inclusion'. Many examples of these tensions and responses to them can be given. NMRs (and the planning-orientated local 'SMRs' initially based on them) originated in the particularist tradition that perceives data or information as intrinsically valuable, with collection and storage justified as much by the standards of research and recording as by any defined set of end-user requirements. That tradition has been challenged to justify itself politically and financially by the costs of technical change and increasingly focused user needs. Though initial responses have focused upon the mutual benefits of relationships between systems, they are increasingly seen in terms of improving services for potential users.

6.5 HEIRNET, as a group of 'top-table' organisations with systems interests at national, local and sectoral levels, both represents the inherited approach and is sensitive to the values behind those pressures for change. It was generally accepted early in this project that many of the issues the brief sought to address were rooted not just in the systems but also in their wider context, expressed as a comprehensive operational framework for the conservation and understanding of the overall historic environment.

6.6 Use of this framework in analysing the distribution and patterning of information resources increased the profile of usage, by seeing systems together with the functions and activities they are intended to inform. It also helped clarify the role of information management by confirming that the primary driver of change is interaction between all four components of the operational framework. The core interaction is between the historic environment and its uses, mediated through the conservation process, and helped or hindered by the demands and constraints of organisational structures. Powerful new capabilities for information management may open up dazzling possibilities, but in the leading role, rather than serving a specific use-related purpose, they can easily run down wrong routes towards unproductive or impracticable outcomes.

6.7 This is not to weaken the role or down-play the significance of information-managing organisations. Rather, they are strengthened by recognition of their work as the means to ends, because it highlights the importance of firm links with user needs in the real world. The mapping exercise confirms this view, by showing that HEIRs range widely in types, structure and functions, reflecting the diversity of interests concerned with aspects of the historic environment. They are not all easily categorised, and do not all accept the need for properly managed information to underpin their activities. This places emphasis upon creating linkages between networked and interoperable but physically dispersed systems; it moves away from models of global information management aiming to create nation-wide or national-local systems.

6.8 The major national and local systems can gain much greater influence through properly defined roles in serving nation and community respectively, as points of access to national and local data-sets; increasing use of interoperable systems and remote access ought eventually to take the heat out of 'data-exchange'. Only the national systems can help facilitate the data standards, structures and protocols that will maximise the interoperability of a distributed system. Only the local systems, with national support, can break out from limited archaeological management roles towards a wider service (with others) of their communities through information on all aspects and uses of the local environment. HEIRNET itself provides a macro-analogy, bringing together not just national and local general records systems, but also other conservation interests who use and need information systems, such as archivists and museums.

6.9 Ensuring that the powerful new capabilities of information technology are servants rather than masters of uses must not distract attention from important outstanding developmental problems. It may be unrealistic and unhelpful to try and impose a common structure on existing HEIRs, but better integration is desirable. This can be facilitated by the Internet, which provides an informal and non-hierarchical system of nodes or gateways. If these gateways can be interoperable then data-sets that need to be held only once become accessible for searching from any number of gateways, each with a particular user focus or interface. The Dublin Core provides a widely accepted international standard for resource discovery that can be specifically applied to HEIRs (Miller and Greenstein 1997). Yet it is also a flexible standard which can be extended widely for any number of schemes, so there has to be effective control to avoid nullifying the advantage of an agreed standard.

6.10 Thus the organisational issue to be worked through is not only how to structure HEIRs in relation to each other as information systems, but also how to maximise interconnectivity or 'interoperability' in the service of clearly defined roles. If all activities of understanding, conserving and explaining the historic environment must draw upon all relevant information, then it must be easily accessible and, when enhanced by use, easily returned to the appropriate system. The main tool will be the devising of usable data standards and interoperable data structures for the proper use and storage of information, and which can be reasonably be insisted upon by funding organisations as a condition of grant.

6.11 Whilst the desirable standards and approaches must be presented as clearly as possible, it is important not to exchange the command mind-set of a system-of-systems for that of complex mandatory data structures. The constantly changing universe of information systems contains a wide range of types and levels of technical development. Taking up the MIDAS standard will be beyond the capabilities and perceived needs of many. It will be more important to facilitate a general awareness of what is going on everywhere, and to help guide designers of systems towards models which can minimise extra work by others to achieve desirable levels of interoperability. The HLF-funded Local Heritage Initiative has two kinds of lesson to teach, about the dangers of unilateral or isolated approaches to systems development, and about the difficulty of using many SMRs in their present form for the important task of handling information that will involve local people with their local environments.

6.12 Returning to the five deliverables, mixed success with the three 'mapping' elements (a-c) becomes easier to understand. It was recognised at the outset that a preliminary project could not identify all the key information systems, but might have to be limited to the main HEIRs and a sample of the rest, with 'all' modified by 'key'. One HEIR often pointed towards other less well-known ones. Any point-in-time 'map' has limited value because HEIRs are continuously being created, or closed, or changed in response to needs and technological opportunities.

6.13 Undoubtedly there are genuine information gaps, such as the weakness of many general records on industrial archaeology and buildings in use, though one might need to distinguish between lack of records and inability to communicate between systems, whether for lack of awareness or technical problems. It is one matter to match all aspects of the historic environment to information systems by subject, period and location; it is another to match the range of uses at various scales with general national and local records and specialised systems. The reference to re-use of information for education emphasises that coverage is not enough by itself; there has to be outreach from or access to the basic systems in formats fit for academic and non-academic purposes, and this additional requirement multiplies the scope for omissions.

6.14 Duplication also needs careful and realistic consideration. It may be uncontroversial when information is shared by mutual updating between separate systems serving distinct purposes. The policy of holding and maintaining each data-set in one place only, which then makes it available for everyone else, should not be imposed where particular circumstances cause major problems of accessibility or format. Efforts should be concentrated upon the wasteful duplication that arises from ignorance or politically-driven double-recording, and upon ensuring good communication between systems used for different purposes.

6.15 These considerations are background for recommendations responding to deliverables (d) and (e). The answer to (d) is that the development of information systems relating to the historic environment of the UK must be explicitly and directly in response to user needs, which is stronger than "bearing in mind the need to enable access and enhance public benefit". General national and local systems must define their roles and frame the requirement for continuing maintenance and structural development, in terms of facilitating those uses, either directly or through mediated / processed outputs.

6.16 Deliverable (e), the 'strategic vision for information systems that relate to the UK's historic environment' therefore has three main components.
(a) a presumption that all relevant aspects of the conservation process and uses for aspects of the historic environment will draw upon and contribute to appropriate information systems
(b) a clear statement from each information system of its scope, functions and purposes, as a means of communication and a practical aid to resource discovery
(c) a presumption in systems management, when new ones are created and existing ones reengineered, of convergence towards standards that maximise the scope for interoperability between systems.

6.17 The strategic framework proposed below - the register, the technical advisory facility and modest financial incentives - is intended to maximise interconnectivity within a distributed set of information systems. Development of that distributed set will be driven by the progress of projects and activities, but moderated by encouragement in the managing of their information towards a convergence between their particular interests and general best practice. There will need to be sensitive consultation and realistic handling of thorny issues surrounding feelings of personal ownership of data and IPR. But it should offer a better prospect than the conflicts and communication failures with systems too often perceived as separate and forbiddingly established.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Strategy

1 Users needs should drive the future development of an agreed UK-wide developmental strategy for information systems serving the historic environment.