Recent developments on the Internet, including the availability of online
catalogues for the PRO and the British Library Manuscript Department, are
making the work of mining history research that much easier. Principally due
to the easy with which digital resources can be searched. Other digital
resources will become available in the near future including the National
Archives Network:A2A.

In a recent posting to the Arts and Humanities Data Service list the
following announcement was made on funding for digital access to archive
listing across England.

> A2A is delighted to announce the success of its £697,000 
> bid to 	the Invest to Save Budget.  The result,  announced 
> by Mo Mowlam in a press conference held at  the Cabinet 
> Office on Thursday 17 February,  will enable the creation 
> of the  infrastructure for the English national archive 
> network  at the Public Record Office between April 2000 and 
> March 2002.    The award of the total amount sought will 
> allow the  central body to  undertake the overall control 
> and enforcement of standards; provide expertise in 
> information technology; manage offshore keying contracts 
> and mount the resulting archival data on the World Wide  
> Web.  The success of the bid will mean the retrospective 
> conversion of about 400,000 pages of existing hard-copy 
> catalogues of records of national, regional and local 
> importance, and dating from  between the twelfth and  
> twentieth centuries, which are held in local archive 
> offices in England.

Some digital resources specific to mining are already on the Internet but
they are as yet limited - see
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/fod.htm for an outline.  Should the
Mining Journal (1835 on) become available it would be a significant step
forward - see the discussion on this list in September 1999 on "Best value"
in mining. In the meantime one major resource for late 19th century mining -
the collated Mineral Statistics which, although published in hard form over
the last decade, were inaccessible in digital form due to hardware and
software changes at Exeter - should shortly be available.

At the same time the amount of mining-history related material published on
the Internet is increasing - see my message to the list on Lead and Labour
25/2/00. 

In the past a group of mining historians did look at the feasibility of
co-ordinating the availability of digital resources which at that time were
largely in private hands and not readily accessible. My feeling is that,
given the growth of the Internet, we should look again at those resources.
A number of issues should be addressed - 

1) Encouraging the publication of raw mining related data - statistical and
textual - in digital form, either on the Internet or on CD.

2) Providing a metadatabase of all mining history related digital resources.

3) Archiving mining related digital resouces and publications.

Your comments would be appreciated

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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