Those members with an interest in lead mining and/or mining in the southern
Scottish uplands should direct their web browser to the following site -
http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/LaGrangeLn/sandham/index.htm
There you will find a major work on the social history of lead mining at
Leadhills, in south-west Scotland by Bill Harvey. I haven't had time to do
more than scan through the work but it would to appear to be very well
researched, as one would expect from an author with a sound knowledge of the
mines and their locality. Notification of the work was published in the
latest Northern Mine Research Society (NMRS) Newsletter (Feb. 2000, p. 3).
There Bill suggests that Lead and Labour was published on the Internet (Web)
because it was 'too lengthy for a Society memoir'. If that was so then it
would be far too unwieldy to publish on the Web. It does not appear to be
unwieldy and I am sure that NMRS would accept it for publication.
Leads and Labour is probably the first substantial work on British lead
mining to be published on the Web and as such raises a couple of questions
on web publishing. Is this work archived? And why should it only be
available to the, current, minority who have access to the Internet?
The Web is now an acceptable publication media and established edited
journals are given equal status with those published in traditional hard
form. The success of the online journal Internet Archaeology bears witness
to that fact. But if major works on mining history are to be published on
the Web alone then it should be within a recognised framework with adequate
archiving arrangements. Work published on a personal homepage will disappear
as soon as it came if for any reason the account lapses.
Peter
______________________________________________
Peter Claughton, Blaenpant Morfil, Rosebush, Clynderwen,
Pembrokeshire, Wales SA66 7RE.
Tel. 01437 532578; Fax. 01437 532921; Mobile 07831 427599
University of Exeter - Department of History
School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Co-owner - mining-history e-mail discussion list.
See http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/mining-history/ for details.
Mining History Pages - http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/
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