Site "monitor"
Site "monitor"
Anyone know anything about this? Sounds like a good idea.
Re: Site "monitor"
Sorry Nigel, in what context?
Re: Site "monitor"
For EH. Sanctuary mentioned it on TMA and I see you've now mentioned it to him.
Re: Site "monitor"
Ah, yes. It struck me we raised the potential of this with them way back and hit a brick wall. We could maybe get a story out of it if we can unearth those early emails etc...
Re: Site "monitor"
I always presumed that a network of unofficial Monitors existed anyway. Certainly I'm sure a lot of people on this board have reported damage/concerns about a monument to English Heritage. The question is when do Monitors go from passive reporting to active maintenance.
Re: Site "monitor"
I suspect that apart from 'litter picking', which we've all done, active maintenance would be frowned upon by the powers that be, unless carried out by approved groups. For instance, local archy socs, CASPN and the like.
Way back when, we developed a 'site visit report' form - there's probably still a copy on DropBox somewhere - which we tried to persuade people such as TMAers to complete when they were out and about. Nothing came of it. As I said on TMA earlier, the problems come in evaluating the accuracy of such reports and compiling/analyzing the results. I'm coming to the conclusion that local archy socs are probably best placed to do this in many cases.
I'd like to foster a closer relationship with various societies if we can, the we'd be better placed to suggest such schemes where they don't already exist. (Are we back to that smartphone app we talked about?)
Way back when, we developed a 'site visit report' form - there's probably still a copy on DropBox somewhere - which we tried to persuade people such as TMAers to complete when they were out and about. Nothing came of it. As I said on TMA earlier, the problems come in evaluating the accuracy of such reports and compiling/analyzing the results. I'm coming to the conclusion that local archy socs are probably best placed to do this in many cases.
I'd like to foster a closer relationship with various societies if we can, the we'd be better placed to suggest such schemes where they don't already exist. (Are we back to that smartphone app we talked about?)
Re: Site "monitor"
Apropos this, I've been looking at, and recently playing with a piece of Android/iOS software developed by Edinburgh Uni, supported by JISC. Details can be found on http://fieldtripgb.blogs.edina.ac.uk/ - I've loaded the software on my Nexus tablet, Samsung phone and iPad so far and all work ok using the latest version (released today).
It's not a 100% solution for what we've previously discussed, but it could go a way toward data collection 'in the field' for all sorts of purposes. I've set up (very basic) templates for reporting Heritage Crime, and for recording which old churches I've visited. Seems to work ok, though it's still only in early beta and has a few quirks to be ironed out. Results can be viewed on a map, graphed, or in a table. Json and KML export is available at present.
I've pointed the developers to our previous articles about recording heritage crime via an app, for their comments and consideration. The main problem is the sharing/consolidation of data across multiple users. I'm hoping they'll provide a method for doing this in a future release, at the moment all data is uploaded via DropBox accounts.
I'd be interested in others' thoughts on this.
It's not a 100% solution for what we've previously discussed, but it could go a way toward data collection 'in the field' for all sorts of purposes. I've set up (very basic) templates for reporting Heritage Crime, and for recording which old churches I've visited. Seems to work ok, though it's still only in early beta and has a few quirks to be ironed out. Results can be viewed on a map, graphed, or in a table. Json and KML export is available at present.
I've pointed the developers to our previous articles about recording heritage crime via an app, for their comments and consideration. The main problem is the sharing/consolidation of data across multiple users. I'm hoping they'll provide a method for doing this in a future release, at the moment all data is uploaded via DropBox accounts.
I'd be interested in others' thoughts on this.