Morning all
I have a query about Periods and searching on them in an HER.
This is prompted by how the searches have been set up in our HER and me thinking they may need to change them, but also check that I have understood how things should work.
Currently, within our HER if we search on a Period term, the system looks for records coded to that period, rather than using the date range (though we can also separately search on dates).
This creates anomalies, though.
For example if we search on the Period “Prehistoric or Roman” we only find 3 terms, whereas there are 657 Prehistoric terms alone in the database.
So I think the Period terms should trigger a search by dates (ie numbers) in the HER so if we searched on the above term we would find 660 records plus.
However, I can also see a use for being able to search on a Period Specifically (eg following the recent HER Forum discussions, First World War) so you can pull out records solely relating to that period, without including records that happen to span it in some way.
So I am thinking that that means the period search should have the options to “just find terms coded to this period term” or “find all records that fall in with this date range” options.
What do FISHies think?
PS before anyone tries to flog us software – we’re skint ; )
best wishes
Nick Boldrini
Historic Environment Record Officer
Archaeology Section
Design and Historic Environment Team
Planning Service
Regeneration and Economic Development
Durham County Council
County Hall
Durham
DH1 5UQ
Tel: 03000 267008