I actually think this is a bit of a red herring issue

 

If the digital data goes from EH to HERs the only thing that has changed is where you get the information from.

 

How accessible the related archives are has not altered and is, I think, a completely separate issue.

 

Whilst things can always be improved – the fact of moving where you found out about the archive from has no real impact on how accessible that archive should be.

 

As an example.

 

You can access information on many books in a library – but it does not hold all of them. And that fact that you can access information about those books from that library does not mean it should hold them.

 

There is a separate system for inter library loans so you can get access. In this case – you can contact EH Archives to get access.

 

If you think access should be better – then that’s fine – but it is not related to where you find out about the archive.

 

 

Thank you for clarifying that Crispin.

 

If EH or Historic England are going to keep all of the archives/collection in their repository then we need a clear process by which customers can access them.

 

 

If this project helps to clarify roles and responsibilities, and then to target resources accordingly, I would hope that one outcome would be for English Heritage (Historic England) to devote serious effort to digitising its collections/archives and making then available online. And preferably retrievable using reference identifiers that are already embedded in datasets.

Rather than needing to copy around physical media, the distributed HER records would then be able to cross-reference accessible archive from HE as well as from other repositories.

Crispin

 

 

The other thing to throw into the mix is what happens to all of those sources that EH hold? An example of this would be the architectural surveys which Martin mentioned that EH have. Would we get copies of the architectural surveys to hold so that customers are able to access them? Do EH continue to hold them and we just provide a reference for them?

 

If the answer is that copies of the sources (or the originals) would make their way to individual HERs then there is another issue here due to the pressure of space a lot of HERs are under.

 

I'm aware that this is a separate issue but it is something that at least needs to be addressed in a minimal fashion in this pilot project.