Depository?

[troll]

Agreed sir however, material stored in educational establishments as teaching aids or in public buildings are not being destroyed. A kind of a time capsule that has a function and is not hidden until it somehow magically "becomes" interesting.

[Mole]

I do agree Troll, exess stuff could be offered to schools etc. Indeed, at several times while giving talks/ tours around site to schools we have been asked for Unstrat material. Unfortunately the curator/ DC is not really willing to let stuff 'dissapear out of the archive' as he puts it. Arguments that U/S material, unless of intrinsic value, adds nothing to an archive don't seem to work.

Having just delivered a load of site archives to various museums and seen the lack of space/ organisation I do think that the more tangeable bits of what is essentially junk could be given to schools etc. I do take Invisible Mans point about predicting future research needs but surely a list of whos got what that is stored at the curating Museum would mitigate against this.

While I am on the subject of archiving has anybody else had anything to do with entering sites onto the OASIS database? Talk about slow - also why am I doing the SMR officers job as they get paid more than me (as do most folk?)[?]

[Oxbeast]

Good plan. I think they should be regional, rather than national. The NMR and ADS are all centralised, but most of that can come on t'interweb. Its more difficult with pot. It would be great if as many documentary archvies as possible were duplicated and put on ADS. researchers could get national data, and still be able to access the originals in their region.

[sniper]

well, I work for a very large unit in the North, and we have three large storage facilities for just our stuff, and they are all packed. We also give a lot of material to schools, and it is all recorded before it goes anywhere. Its all duplicate materials anyway, I mean just how many spindle whorls does one unit need?
In terms of one storage facility for all units, I can just imagine the amount of documentation needed in order just to be able to find things again once they've gone on the shelves, and, if you can't find something, its no better than it being destroyed.

++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++