Infuse LAARC catalogue with your inspirations
September 16, 2009 Archaeology, LAARC catalogue, WebsitesYou may be aware that Museum of London holds a catalogue of summary information on over 7500 sites and projects that have taken place in Greater London over the past 100 years!
This information is managed by the Museums’ London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC). Just in case, you don’t know where it is, the catalogue is part of the Museums website and can be found at www.museumoflondon.org.uk/laarc/catalogue.
The web site is aimed at delivering the LAARC’s vast and invaluable data resources on London Archaeology to researchers and to the public at large.It was launched in 2000 and as we are fast approaching 2010 we believe after nearly a decade, it could do with some improvement. Ideas have been brewing for some time on how to infuse life into the LAARC online catalogue. Our vision for redevelopment of LAARC web resource is greatly inspired by the new generation Web 2.0 and cloud computing technologies for data mining and information exchange. However, ultimately our goal is to deliver to the users of LAARC a web tool that is beneficial for your investigative zest and that would help foster your interest in London archaeology.Your views are important to us and will help us greatly to move the project forward in the right direction.
We will appreciate very much if you let us know:
- Is the LAARC online catalogue a useful data resource?
- What can we do to make it more useful and interesting?
- What do you like/dislike about the current web site?
- What content, data, display, navigation or features are the most desirable to you?
- What would make the LAARC web resource more attractive to you?
I very much look forward to hearing from you. Please post your answers or comments in the comments box below, or email us at webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk.
Many thanks,
Julia Fernee, Museum of London Web Development
Roy Stephenson :
Date: September 21, 2009 @ 3:37 pm
Is the LAARC online catalogue a useful data resource?
yes, very useful
What can we do to make it more useful and interesting?
Data doenlaods
What do you like/dislike about the current web site?
Like the maps
What content, data, display, navigation or features are the most desirable to you?
Multiple site maps, and site perimeters
James Gerrard :
Date: September 21, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
The catalogue is useful. Particularly for getting site codes / grid refs for particular sites that might be known by name rather than code (ie Winchester Palace etc).
It needs to conect more closely with the data. I want to be able to ask it to tell me every site that has a digital report for Roman pottery. At the moment I’d have to search for every site that had Roman pottery and then look at each entry individually.
I dislike the website’s unreliability.
More access to resources without needing to request the data from an individual. Site archives on line as pdfs or catalogues as delimited text is what we want!
Pat Miller :
Date: September 22, 2009 @ 8:59 am
It would be useful if the LARRC website could bring back the mapping attached to the sites – this was removed a while ago and queries to LAARC suggested it would be reintroduced – However whenever I use the site this facility is still not availbale – the only locator for sites is the NGR ref/address. It was very useful and should be made available again so you have a more specific idea where the sites are located in their respective boroughs.
Nick Holder :
Date: September 24, 2009 @ 7:22 am
The LAARC online catalogue is the main tool I use within the MoL archaeology pages. It is certainly very useful to me as a researcher with archaeological experience. However, I think that historians could and should use the LAARC data; this would be made easier if there were more keywords or tags for the data. For example a historian is more likely to search under themes like ‘monastery’ or ‘latrine’ than under sitecodes such as ‘THE07′ or pottery wares such as ‘Kingston’
Karen Thomas :
Date: October 1, 2009 @ 12:33 pm
I find the LAARC online catalogue very useful especially for enquiries about sites in specific areas. The summaries are very useful to get an idea of whether the site it going to be of use or not. It would be easier if the map search facility was in use especially if you could click on the site on a map and a little box of information appeared and perhaps the ability to zoom in to see the extent of the site and maybe even a site plan showing the trenches? Also I think researchers would find it useful to be able to download some data directly as they are not always close to London and a trip to look at the records is not that easy to organise.
Julia Fernee :
Date: October 1, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
I moved my response to the survey feedback to a blog entry Our vision for the LAARC on-line catalogue
There is now a group called Laarc catalogue which wiull follow up the updates on the development of the LAARC online catalogue
Finally the alpha release of the LAARC Search API is comming very soon.
Julia Fernee on behalf of the Web Development Team
Dr Ruth Richardson :
Date: April 13, 2010 @ 12:55 pm
The catalogue IS useful, a wonderful resource. How could it be improved?
1. agree with all suggestions above, especially about site naming, and object naming/gathering, and being able to home in on sites/things
2. Many of the reports etc seem very recent – I am more interested in old archaeology, ie: the history of archaeology in London, so I would very much appreciate information about where reports used to be published, before MOL, and if they are accessible?
3. areas of interest – I suspoect that many people like me (historians) might be interested in an area (Notting Hill, Drury Lane, Isle of Dogs) and it would be great if one could select/indicate on a map where one’s interest lay, and the map could SHOW what had been found there – and like another rsearcher suggested, click on each to see the artefact/data
I fully agree with what has been said about not having to contact staff – I do understand that the creation of an interactive map/finds shelf will be labour-intensive & costly, but why not a virtual museum store?
[I am interested in some districts which no longer have street names - completely obliterated by modern buildings - so hard to research!]
Thank-you for asking for our feedback, and best wishes to all those who have worked so hard to get the site to where it is… I hope our suggestions don’t disheareten you – they are not intended to!