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Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - Wax - 28th April 2012
kevin wooldridge Wrote:As most of the work done in the area covered by the GGAT HER would be work done by GGAT, why is necessary to scan grey literature? Wouldn't it be easier to just upload the original word processor/AutoCAD documents that made up the reports? I am giuessing that GGAT's archive still has the original word processor/AutoCAD documents.....
Hopefully GGAT do have copies of the original digital documents especially if they created them but that is not always the case in other HERs . Sometimes all that lands on the desk is a printed copy of the report hence the need to scan. There is of course the historical archive it isn't that long ago things were done the old fashioned way.
Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - Martin Locock - 28th April 2012
(I am a trustee of GGAT)
Making the original reports available online would be better than nothing, but having 2000 separate documents would be hard to search and use. HERs use structured data for a reason - if you want to run a query for a particular site type, period, location, or community then data must be held in these separate fields. Therefore conversion of a text description, or even a tabular catalogue, requires human intervention..
The idea behind the project is that volunteers are trained in the HER structure and content and then go through the information in the reports. The new records are checked and validated by the HER manager before being uploaded to the Archwilio system.
There would be copyright issues about copying text straight from reports.
To satisfy Unit's curiosity about VAT, at one stage all work undertake by an educational charity was VAT free but there has been a change in the rules and the situation is more complex, so that some services are VAT free and some are not.
Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - Unitof1 - 29th April 2012
Quote:There would be copyright issues about copying text straight from reports.
To satisfy Unit's curiosity about VAT, at one stage all work undertake by an educational charity was VAT free but there has been a change in the rules and the situation is more complex, so that some services are VAT free and some are not.
The change must be of a fundermental nature. That it is back dated to the 1980s suggest that it is a fasle interpretation by the trusts presumably with advice from the ifa. It presumably relates to the invoice for field work?
ps: having 2000 separate documents would be hard to search and use.-not true
Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - Dinosaur - 29th April 2012
Martin - useful post, inserts some sense to this thread :face-approve:
Presumably some knowledgeable oversight of the process would considerable improve the results of the project - with lots of local knowledge and professional insight (eg having been around long enough to know how the excavation techniques have changed a lot over the last several decades) I regularly manage to tease important information from old grey lit reports which the excavator and the then curators missed at the time (which is often fair enough - hindsight being a wonderful thing) and hence never made it onto the HER entry. Think what I'm getting at is that a review of the older material should be included in the process?
An example - a town in northern England has an important zone of Medieval waterlogged deposits below part of the market place and adjacent properties. In one small area there were several archaeological interventions in the 1980s/90s which encountered these deposits, although staggeringly none of the resulting grey lit reports include any useable level information! [rather important for informed planning decisions?]. Until I'd had occasion to get all the reports together and go through them (and then do a lot of swearing!), no one had spotted this problem. However, a recent watching brief only a few meters away encountered the edge of the same deposits and got a level on them (it also identified the cause of the waterlogging), information which can now be extrapolated to the earlier work enhancing its value/significance [on the assumption that the artificial perched water table has a fairly consistent level, no reason to think it doesn't]
Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - Martin Locock - 29th April 2012
The long-term plan is that the database will contain records for each of the aspects of the heritage recorded by an intervention, plus the event records for the project; each record will then be linked to photographs and the report. This will allow it to be found by thematic and geographic searches.
Even when finished, though, there will always be a role for those using HER data to actually interrogate it - I don't believe that desk-tops which merely recite the HEr data without reviewing it are worthy of the name.
Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - BAJR - 29th April 2012
Thanks Martin for as Dino says injecting some sense and clarity into the thread.
I am struggling enough with getting my wifes company ready for VAT! for it to be of relevance to this thread. so keep on talking sense.
As I said, I remain neutral on this all. and look forward to seeing an accessible usable and open access to the grey lit.
Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - Unitof1 - 29th April 2012
good luck with understanding the VAT laws hosty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes
Martin has presumbly had first hand experience of whats going on with VAT archaeology and the VAT man. I would suggest that the ifa has not got any guidences on what we archaeologists do in relation to VAT. I am very sorry that you believe that some dilution of grey literature into a database by who ever can ever replace reading the original grey literature and makes me think that maybe who ever produces the grey literature should give up and just produce a database. I still dont need an HER to do an evaluation and the day I do please shoot me. As far as I can see you are off topic
Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - Martin Locock - 29th April 2012
I can see that there are two models of how archaeology should work:
1 Existing archaeological information > summarised in HER > used by planners and curators to identify possible arch effects of development > brief for work > spec prepared by contractor > work undertaken to spec, monitored by curator > report prepared > report to HER > new information added
2 Unit of 1 decides to dig > Unit digs > Unit writes a report > Unit gets paid
On the whole I think the first is better.
Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - Unitof1 - 29th April 2012
in your model there are no archaeologists
Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys - Jack - 30th April 2012
Martin Locock Wrote:I can see that there are two models of how archaeology should work:
1 Existing archaeological information > summarised in HER > used by planners and curators to identify possible arch effects of development > brief for work > spec prepared by contractor > work undertaken to spec, monitored by curator > report prepared > report to HER > new information added
2 Unit of 1 decides to dig > Unit digs > Unit writes a report > Unit gets paid
On the whole I think the first is better.
Yep the first is preferable.............but I would add report to be published on the end, because what is the point of doing anything unless it is disseminated for academic review and then (or as well) passed onto the wider public in some form.
Too much sits in piles of grey literature or doesn't even get that far and fails to enter the wider world.