Dear all,
like many of you we are in the process of designing a HLF bid to expand
access to the Kent SMR. Clearly 'accessibility' has various different
aspects relating to physical and intellectual access to the information. I
know that many SMRs are creating interpretive layers, parish summaries,
educational modules etc to help interpret SMR information for a
non-specialist audience but it has always seemed to me that this still
involves 'professionals' getting between the public and SMR information. To
an extent this is certainly necessary to help the non-specialist audience
understand the often technical and unwieldy content of the average SMR and
receive that information in a useful format and we will also be doing this.
To provide truly expanded access to the SMR, however, I believe it is really
necessary to permit users to access the full database, even if it only
contains core fields possibly cleaned to aid understanding. Inevitably this
also involves permitting the website users to access the grid references of
sites even if only given to the nearest, say 100m. In recent discussions,
however, several of our local archaeologists, both professional and amateur,
have expressed concern regarding the threat to archaeological sites posed by
releasing grid references. My own philosophy tends toward 'publish and be
damned' but I would like to ask what approach other SMRs who may have be
considering putting the database on the web intend to take. I don't believe
that releasing information located to the nearest km is really permitting
access to the SMR.
During the period that HLF have made funds available to SMRs I haven't
really heard this fairly fundamental debate take place and yet presumably we
are the ones who will get the flak when sites get raided/ploughed following
the release of their location on the web or through other means. SMRs with
Portable Antiquities information have additional problems but the issue is
clearly more general than that. I think that releasing the SMR on the
internet with the avowed hope that Joe Public will use it is not the same as
permitting the comparatively few researchers who may be aware of its
existince to come and view it in the office. Publishing and marketing the
SMR in the global arena of the internet is certainly taking us into a new
era and it this step that gives many archaeologists real cause for concern.
Has anyone else had discussions on this with their local units/consultants
etc and what conclusions were reached?
regards,
Paul Cuming
Kent County Council
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