1. Cambridgeshire Heritage Gateway Pilot Sarah Poppy sarah.poppy@cambridgeshire.gov.uk Heritage Gateway Previews

2. Why join the Heritage Gateway?  Rapid and cost-effect means of establishing HER online  Strong belief in common access point to Historic Environment information  No need to reinvent the wheel!  Economies of scale and potential for future capacity building (mapping, delivery of proposed Register of Historic Sites and Buildings of England)

3. Why we became a pilot?  Involvement with Heritage Gateway via ALGAO and HBSMR user group  Keen to test and demonstrate concept  Long-term aspirations to put HER online  Objective in Archaeology Service Plan  Online HER access required to support newly established SLAs with districts  Demand from local community!  HLF route or in-house development not viable options  Cambridgeshire was first HER to go live on the Heritage Gateway in April 2007!

4. Processes involved – HBSMR Gateway  Had to follow local authority compliance procedure  Some difficulty in engaging with IT department  Don‘t underestimate time and effort required!  Preinstallation discussions between IT department, exeGesIS and HER  Software and hardware prerequisites (SQL server, web server)  Consideration of which data to put online  Customisation of HER record layout  2 day site visit to install and configure  Desktop routine to manually upload HER data  Remote support provided by exeGesIS and IT department

10. What the HG is intended for?  Increased public and education sector access to HER records, without need for consultation  Provide background/context information for all research  Enable HER resources to be targeted at professional enquiries, data enhancement and digitisation and future developments e.g. meeting requirements of HPR  Building much-needed links between local and national datasets

11. Major fieldwork projects W of Cambridge 1990-2006

13. What the HG is not intended for?  Not replacing the need for planning-related HERs consultations  Why not?  Some datasets not accessible via HG, such as Scheduled Monuments, Listed Buildings, fieldwork, cropmark transcription  Will not contain information about projects in progress  “Sensitive sites” may be withheld from public access  NGRs are 6-figure only  GIS data not available at present

14. Potential concerns  Quality of data  HER data is published “as is”  Culmination of 5-year data enhancement project  However no mediated “public access” content, and older records of variable quality  Loss of income  Average £4k p.a generated from HER enquiries  Income from other sources e.g. SLAs, selling GIS data  HG should not replace planning-related enquiries - will require monitoring!  Standing still was not an option …

15. The future: dissemination and beyond…  Spreading the word  Launched at Cambridgeshire Archaeology Forum in June  HG preview events at five locations  Hands-on sessions in libraries and learning centres  Local society workshop at Cambridge Antiquarian Society Conference  Promotion via CCC website  EH project to make village/parish linkages

17. The future: dissemination and beyond…  In the future…  Formalising IT support arrangements  Collation of feedback and web-statistics  HLF bid in preparation for community archaeology project includes development of online education and thematic resources  Ongoing digitisation projects to add supporting content and resources (grey literature, images etc)  Key requirement is ability to hyperlink to single HG record