I should probably expand a little on my answer to this one. One of the reasons for putting the HER online was precisely so users, public and professional, would no longer have to make the trip to Inverness, which can be 3 hours from many parts of Highland. People are very welcome to come in if they wish to do so and we assist them as much as we can. So the drop in visitor numbers to the office is expected and welcomed, both by us and our users. We had well over 12,000 unique visitors last year to the online HER.

 

Cheers

Sylvina

-----Original Message-----
From: Issues related to Historic Environment Records [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Seddon, Melissa
Sent: 16 May 2011 10:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Visitor/public access to HER

 

Hi Alex,

 

We do have a dedicated visitor space, but it is very small - we can accommodate two visitors at a time at the very most. It does not have a terminal. We moved to our present location in 2008, and the building we are in is not open to the public so anyone wishing to visit has to make an appointment. We were previously based in Hereford Town Hall which is open to the public, so we were able to have two 'open' mornings per week when visitors could drop in without an appointment, although not many people made use of this arrangement. We also had much more space for visitors than we do now.

 

Our database is available online via our own website and the Heritage Gateway. This has definitely led to a drop in visitors to the office, although it has led to an overall increase in users - we get a fair number of online enquiries from overseas. We had 43 visitors in 2009 and 51 in 2010, so nearly one a week, like some of the other replies. These were mostly contractors, A-Level students from the Sixth Form College and other members of the public. Most of them had used our online database first (or had a search done by us, in the case of contractors) and wanted to see grey literature reports, aerial photographs and our secondary files - we haven't digitised these yet and have no immediate plans to do so.

 

Kind regards,

 

Melissa

 

Melissa A Seddon
SMR Officer
Herefordshire Archaeology
Environment, Planning and Waste
Herefordshire Council
PO Box 230
Blueschool House
Blueschool Street
HEREFORD
HR1 2ZB
 
Tel: 01432 260130
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Website: www.herefordshire.gov.uk/htt
 
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From: Issues related to Historic Environment Records [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Godden, Alex
Sent: 13 May 2011 15:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Visitor/public access to HER

Hi all,

Apologies for a reasonably sensible Friday afternoon question!

I'm trying to get an idea of how many HERs out there have a dedicated visitor space, and if so how many public access/HER request visitors do you get a month? Does anyone still get a lot of visitors if they have online HERs or digitised collections? Does your visitor space have terminals with access to your HERs?

Cheers!

Alex

Alex Godden BA (Hons) MA
Archaeologist/ Historic Data Manager
Strategic Environmental Delivery Group
Economy, Transport and Environment Department
Hampshire County Council
Tel. 01962 832338    HPSN 8 200 2338
Email: [log in to unmask]

 

hants.gov.uk/landscape-and-heritage

 

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