Dear All,
Surely it isn’t impossible for IT people to create an “inclusive OR” search algorithm?
Cheers,
Neil
From: The Forum for Information Standards in Heritage (FISH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Boldrini
Sent: 15 April 2014 11:43
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [FISH] Period searching
Hi Crispin
We may not have a specific HER ICT budget, but we do have access to resources ie staff time to do the ICT work on it. So no budget isn’t as bad as it may sound.
Also thanks for the reply, and to others for replies, as well. Its confirming what I thought, so will proceed on that basis
Best wishes
Nick Boldrini
Historic Environment Record Officer
Ext 267008
From: The Forum for Information Standards in Heritage (FISH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Crispin Flower
Sent: 15 April 2014 11:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [FISH] Period searching
Hi Nick
I was about reply, then I saw your “PS” ;-) But as I remarked to someone else this morning about another HER not a million miles from yours… we should collectively be very concerned that organisations responsible for maintaining unique databases that are essential for discharging local authority duties like planning, not to mention contributing to the collective national record, can be saying they have absolutely no budget to invest in running, adapting, and maintaining such systems.
This (unreliable period recording and retrieval) is one of the major weakness of all the home-baked HER systems I have seen, a direct result of people trying to build systems themselves or get systems from developers who do not understand the domain.
That being said, there’s actually no single answer to “how things should work”, as decent searching can be implemented in a number of says, but you are completely right to observe that searching on the string “Prehistoric or Roman” is useless, and that there needs to be a mapping between date ranges and culture-historical terms, probably both during data entry and retrieval.
Good luck, and you know where we are!
Crispin
From: The Forum for Information Standards in Heritage (FISH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Boldrini
Sent: 15 April 2014 10:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [FISH] Period searching
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
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