Improving access to better preserved heritage data through the Heritage Information Access Strategy
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-05-23

One of the key principles for the Heritage Information Access Strategy (HIAS) is that heritage data and information ‘should not be at risk of loss, fragmentation, inundation (in data), or system obsolescence’. We need to have broad agreement across the sector on what the implications of that principle are. To help with that, the HIAS is planning a suite of activities, as part of improving access to historic environment information, and this presentation will explain more about those. Within the HIAS programme there are work packages to address the often interrelated issues of reference data standards along with data sharing and rights management, which are key to providing the right access to the right users in the way that they need it. Collaboration between data creators and curators on how best to manage, share and ensure long-term preservation of such data is vital to the success of the HIAS programme. We also know that for HIAS there is as much work to be done in raising awareness and supporting the training needs for key skills in the sector as there is to resolve the technical challenges for data preservation, data integration and data interoperability.

Keith May, Historic England; Sarah Poppy, Historic England; Ben Wallace, Warwickshire County Council