Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys

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Bit early for drinking-and kev us archaeologists are paid to produce knowledge and to a certain extent disseminate it. What we have traditionally done is to produce grey literature for every single site. This is a bound paper product using real paper. We produce so many of them and then deposit them in various places. To my mind not nessecarily just in an HER what ever they are-well basically something that an advisor to a planning authority what like to have because that is the closest that they come to having any archaeological authority. The only reason for an advisor to need an HER is to down play the archaeology on a site. An HER is anti doing field archaeology. The HER has never ever been a public lending liberay. Show me a single one. They are all desperate to get digital beacuse they think that it can make it look like they are a public service when they are really a service to the planning authority which costs them a lot of money to basically have copies of grey literature. Round my way we have a museum, a document archive and some HERs. These HERs are little more than filing cabinates.

No we also pay museums to take the archieve which normally also includes a copy of the grey literature so in effect we real archaeologists are paying a museum to hold and disseminate our "knowledge". If I was to say which one between a HER and a museum I would fund first it would be the museum. They presumably will have the ability to conserve the grey literature as a bound collection of paper.

I think the planning authority should fund its own advisors and as I have said else where they dont have to fund anybody because all they have to do is make the onus on the developer to provide the archaeological consideration with the application and put it into the appeal system that planning applications have.