Hi all
I agree with the Martin's comments and similar from other writers, and will forward some remarks I posted to Ed off-list yesterday, but with apologies that I've only had time to read a small proportion of the messages, so may be behind the curve.
I'd ask whether the unpublished/able grey lit report is a useful thing at all here. Is it the correct target for this debate, or just a by-product of the process? Of course the report is necessary at the point in time of assessing and signing off a project, and it fulfils an essential purpose for producer/clients at that time, but for the medium and longer term, as the means of communicating the results of a project from those who undertook it (the contractor), to those who need the data both within and beyond the immediate casework scenario, it is rather inefficient. Perhaps instead of trying to promote the importance of this stuff with beefed-up technical standards etc, we could acknowledge how ephemeral it is, and find better ways of moving the real data around; we could aim for a scenario in which the grey lit thing can be dropped in the bin without loss, or perhaps retained only as part of the planning or project management history, because all the significant data it contained has been transmitted to the HER/NMR (or other accessible repository) in a more efficient manner (by digital transfer with human quality control and enhancement of indexing). We have in the UK a very strong network of organisations and professional staff positioned to do this essential human part, and this would work even better if the spadework could happen automatically, rather than them wasting time retyping stuff and piling up backlog. Then we achieve truly accessible data, without having to worry about the medium. And to see this from another angle, the grey lit report can be generated almost automatically from the tools the contractor is using to manage their data, as a glossy by-product that brings out the essentials for the primary consumers (e.g. planning archaeologists, EH project managers, etc).
I do agree there must be standards governing what should be the output from fieldwork, and IfA is a good place for this particularly if it can truly encompass build heritage recording. But for making the primary data available where it's needed, I think it may be more useful to improve direct data transfer mechanisms between HERs and fieldworkers (in both directions). Incidentally, I don't know if anyone has mentioned the Scottish "ASPIRE" project, which aims to do precisely this. I'm note sure new standards are needed here, just new tools (after all the data content is all covered by MIDAS isn't it?).
And then keep up the progress on getting all HERs online and cross-searchable (which has come on in leaps and bounds recently).
Yours
Crispin
-----Original Message-----
From: The Forum for Information Standards in Heritage (FISH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martin Locock
Sent: 18 August 2010 10:00
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [FISH] HEGEL - access and standards
There has been some overlap in the discussions between metadata about
grey literature (for cross-searching etc) and data: the bulk of GL
contents is data, not metadata.
For metadata we can fairly freely identify elements that might promote
searchability and re-use, but for data, we must accept that the prime
determinant of a project report contents will be the *project's* purpose
not the *report's.*
One concern I would have from the GLADE user comments is that they
assume that searching a corpus of grey literature is the best way to
find out about archaeological data. We should, I hope, recognise that
this is a workaround arising from the ease with which GL can be added to
OASIS. In the long term, the best way to find archaeological data
should be by examining the structured, consistent and validated data
sets comprising the HERs, online or not. If there is currently a
problem that needs fixing, I would say the problem is that HERs have
backlogs of published and unpublished sources which have not been
analysed and added to the record, of which GL is only a subset, if the
most visible. Therefore we should be looking to HERs to tell us what
*they* find most troublesome about current GL reports.
Martin
--
Martin Locock
Rheolwr Cymorth y Project Project Support Manager
Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru National Library of Wales
[log in to unmask] Ffôn / Phone 01970 632885
Un o lyfrgelloedd mawr y byd One of the great libraries of the world
http://www.llgc.org.uk/
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