It doesn't matter who runs the SMR for an area, as long as its accessible, meaningful and up-to-date. I for one have always had reservations about making SMRs a statutory "duty" purely for local authorities. There is no a priori reason to allocate or devolve such duty to local authorities as opposed to a national agency or whatever. Indeed, a national agency might well resolve the problem of chronic disparity in funding between local authorities, and make any "statutory" SMR easier to understand, find, and fund by tax payers. Perhaps, too, a duty should be laid on a wider range of people from metal detectorists and developers to district councils and farmers to consult an SMR / heritage service before taking actions that might be detrimental to the national archaeological resource.
Cheers,
Neil
>>> [log in to unmask] 02/11/2001 10:47:39 >>>
Before we all get carried away on this one, we need to remember that not
everyone will be able to or even wan't to access SMR data over the Internet,
and our SMR, for one, has a lot of non-digital media also. I think Niall's
suggestions are well worthy of further discussion but to make it work, I
think that would also have to include the issue that David Evans I think
raised some time ago about undoing some of the fragmentation that happened
at Local Government Reorganisation. This also assumes we want to carry on
running SMRs - seems like at least one county archaeologist doesn't, or have
I misunderstood Neil's email.
Paul Gilman
Heritage Information and Records Manager
Essex County Council
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