John said:
> When asked, the RCAHMS say that SMRs are for
> land management
> while their records are for research, but having heard Roger
> Mercer say
> publicly that their records are for land management too, and
> having seen
> them provide copies of datasets to the Forestry Commission
> for example, this
> division won't do.
>
Made all the worse by the fact that they supply point data - which is of no
use whatsoever for land management purposes as it bears no relationship to
the size of a monument (e.g. NX59SE18, a 30ha. site represented by a single
dot, which I had to deal with yesterday).
<snip>
> This is a practical as well as a theoretical issue since it
> has been raised
> by the HLF when I talked to them about possible SMR funding.
Yes - its hard to get funding for making your SMR publically accessible when
a lot of your data has already been made available by the national body.
Additionally, HLF require your bid to be approved by the national body - who
are at the same time looking to HLF for funding to make their own records
more accessible. What it requires is for us to put a more localised slant on
the way we present our information. HLF require market research, and we have
to address a different constituency from those who just want raw data dumped
out en masse.
Tom said:
> Perhaps many of the concerns
> identified could be
> addressed by actually talking to the RCAHMS and reaching a compromise.
>
As John pointed out, he and others "have been trying unsuccessfully to
reach an agreement with RCAHMS over respective roles of NMRS and SMRs for a
long time". ARIA spent years trying to progress matters. Although there is
now some movement in the right direction, 3 years after Baker, and the
subsequent establishment of an SMR Forum to move things on, we still have no
Co-operation Statement between the NMR and SMRs, the Data Standards Working
Group seems to be making no headway (perhaps if they met it might help), and
the Operational Roles Working Group Report seems to have been sidelined
[whatever happened to the April symposium?]. Day-to-day working with the
RCAHMS is fine, and the staff are wonderfully helpful, what we lack is any
idea of a bigger picture - national agreements and guidelines for SMRs,
strategies and forward planning, a vision for the future.
Andrew
Andrew Nicholson
SMR Project Officer
Environmental Planning
Dumfries and Galloway Council
Tel: 01387 260154
Fax: 01387 260149
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http://www.dumgal.gov.uk
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