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Scottish Awards for Quality in Planning 2003

Application form

This application form can either be completed by hand or electronically (pdf version) on the Planning homepage at www.scotland.gov.uk/planning . Please complete all four questions. The deadline is 12 September 2003. An acknowledgement letter will be sent to the person who has completed this form.

Please provide a name and contact details of the organisation responsible for this work. If partners were involved, identify the lead organisation, and then list the other partners/bodies who had a key role.

Name of key partners (if appropriate)

Please complete the form by providing a brief summary (in no more than the space provided) of the piece of work you have entered. You must also conclude, with a key reason, as to why you think this work merits an Award.

Please tick the key criteria which relate to this entry:

You must describe in your written submission (below) how the criteria which you have ticked relates to your project.

Description of project

Professional Knowledge - This project presents information on the archaeology of Aberdeenshire that has been carefully selected from the main Sites and Monuments Record (SMR). This has been achieved through the creation of a summary online version of the SMR. The wider website contains information and short articles on a wide range of relevant subjects, including aerial photography (with many examples), recent discoveries and new fieldwork.

Innovation - When launched in May 2003 this was the first example of a Local Authority SMR to become available online in Scotland. In addition to text descriptions of the sites, the searchable database also links to maps showing their location and, where possible, photographs as well.

Community Interest - The overall website presents an opportunity for residents, researchers and potential foreign tourists to learn about the heritage of Aberdeenshire. The Schools Education Packs, covering the catchment areas of the main academies, are downloadable documents aimed at helping teachers and schoolchildren from 5 to 14 to understand their local prehistory and history. Projects such as Aberdeenshire's Historic Kirkyards provide further opportunities for people to rediscover aspects of the local heritage, supplemented by links to other online resources such as the digitised maps of the National Map Library of Scotland.

Customer Satisfaction - Since going online, the SMR website has attracted much interest (on average 350 visitors per month) and praise, as the following comments demonstrate:

"It's very easy to use and it works nice and quickly. I like both the search form and the way that the results are displayed. I think that it's great that you've made the SMR available like this"

"Wonderful resource, thank you."

"Your site will be a god-send"

"I have just discovered the excellent website of Aberdeenshire Archaeology Service - many congratulations on the site."

Timescale (over which the project has developed)

A basic version of the website has existed since the end of 1999 but with the redevelopment of the Aberdeenshire Council corporate website in 2002 it was decided to update the Archaeology section at the same time. The basic redesign took place between April 2002 and July 2002 when it was re-launched. Since then it has continually evolved in order to meet the ever-growing demands of the virtual visitor, culminating in May 2003 with the launch of an online version of the Sites & Monuments Record containing details on 12,500 archaeological sites within Aberdeenshire.

Context (the problem which had to be addressed)

The website addresses three major problems that had been highlighted in the years preceding its launch. Those problems were:

That access to the SMR data by the general public was limited to those able to make a personal call to the office in Aberdeen, always dependent on the availability of staff and the opening hours of the building. A prior appointment had to be made, giving details of the relevant areas of interest, before the public could view the data under the guidance of a member of staff.

That provision of, and guidance to, relevant resources detailing Aberdeenshire's heritage was unavailable from us as a service in a rapidly-accessible format. This often left researchers, members of the general public and potential tourists approaching us either with confused questions or with simple ones that could have been answered by other means.

That easy dissemination of information on our role within a planning context, or the latest results from developer4unded work or up-coming events within the area were severely lacking. More often than not, the general public as a whole remained unaware of archaeological developments within Aberdeenshire.

Action taken

Once the problems outlined above were identified, steps were taken to use the website as the principal tool to address them. This was done in a variety of ways:

Relevant data were taken from the SMR database and inserted into a new summary version available online. This database is fully searchable in a variety of ways, including type of site, period or even which parish the site is in. There are also links to an online map showing the location of each site and, where possible, photographs as well. These developments allow the SMR to be available 24 hours a day, every day, to anyone in the world.

Basic summaries of the archaeology of the NE of Scotland, combined with Education Packs for schoolchildren and links to online historical maps from the last 500 hundred years provided by the National Map Library of Scotland can now inform those who visit the website.

Specific pages aimed at consultants and developers outline our role within planning, including the legislation supporting it. The latest archaeological finds and events in Aberdeenshire are available through our News section, while entire project reports such as Aberdeenshire's Historic Kirkyards can now be viewed or downloaded.

Results achieved

Since the launch of the website a number of positive developments have been noted. They include:

• Numerous people, ranging from professional archaeologists to interested laypersons, have been accessing data that they would never have had an opportunity to view otherwise.
• Ten per cent of the users of the website are from outside the UK. The majority are from the USA but other countries include Germany, Netherlands, Israel, India and Australia. This represents a large number of
• researchers and potential foreign visitors to Aberdeenshire who are learning about the history and interest of the area.
• New information on sites has been brought to light from interested members of the public contacting the service after reading about the archaeology in their area.
• The general public and developers are now approaching us with informed questions that target specific queries as opposed to general concepts, allowing us to answer them in a quicker, more satisfactory manner.

Conclusion - Why does this piece of work merit an Award?

The development of the Aberdeenshire Archaeology Website has greatly improved the access available to the general public to information on the history of Aberdeenshire. This work allows people to learn more about their surroundings, to understand why we attempt to protect our cultural heritage and what they can do to participate in that process. We have taken the concept of e-government and applied it to a problem in a way that had not been done before in Scotland. With this project the basic aims and standards for all Local Authority Archaeology services have been set as we move towards a unified government presence on the Internet.

Date

10 September 2003

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