There’s been a few milestones reached in the last few weeks at the Scheme. Some of these are pretty trivial, some of them are a bit more far reaching. I’ve just calculated all the figures for the forthcoming Annual Report (produced for the first time by the British Museum, so expect a style change….) and these have produced some good figures. For example; finds have gone up by 44% since the previous reporting period, there’s been a substantial increase in precision of find recording (spatial, textual and artistic) and a significant increase in recorders and those that have come into contact with the Scheme. We’ve also served over 17 million pages, produced 89 million hits and also had a million visits over the last 2 years. I think that’s quite an achievement for a website that has a niche market audience. I’m not going to give the exact figures here, as that will fuel debate prior to publication. You’ll just have to wait and read the facts!
On a more trivial level, we’ve now recorded our 200,000 archaeological object since the Scheme’s inception in 1997; the database now has over 99,000 images which can all be used free of charge for publication. The resource is increasing and its worth is now becoming known. So if anyone actually reads this, fancy using the database to generate data for your research. Go on, you know you want to!
We’ve also launched the joint “Code of Practice for Metal Detecting in England & Wales”. This has proved controversial in some quarters, but it has been quite an achievement to get so many different organisations to sign up to it. Some say it is too harsh, some not harsh enough. It’s only a voluntary code anyway….
OpenCalais helped to tag this with: British Museum • United Kingdom • Wales
Possibly related posts: New PAS leaflet printed • The Romans in Cambridgeshire • Museum review time •
