HIAS: Improving Access to Historic Environment Information for Research

Introduction

The Heritage Information Access Strategy was launched in response to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport Culture White Paper, published in 2016, which said:

HIAS is now rebranded and delivering as Heritage Information Access Simplified. Although led by Historic England, HIAS is a sector-wide partnership overseen by an advisory board. Sector partners include the Archaeology Data Service and the Association of Local Government Archaeological officers. (For full details of partners see our main page on this programme)

Some of the partners are directly involved in a series of projects designed to implement the eight HIAS Principles:

The issues the HIAS programme are addressing are all concerned with the need to simplify access to information and data about the historic environment, a common problem for both researchers and the development sector.

HIAS is addressing confusion around where to go for information, standardisation, consistency, currency and concerns about long-term preservation and persistence of resource.

HIAS also has links to Historic England’s internal Digital Strategy which is delivering the IT developments required for Historic England’s systems and infrastructure to support HIAS. There are seven individual work packages delivering the HIAS principles which will be looked at in detail highlighting how they are improving access for researchers.

Data Transfer to Historic Environment Records

Historic England and its predecessor organisations (RCHME and Ordnance Survey Archaeological Branch in particular) created a database and associated GIS layers of over 421,000 monument and 162,000 event records. This information resource has had differing names over the years including the National Monument Record (NMR) and is currently known as the National Record of the Historic Environment (hereafter the National Record).

This is separate from the record of designated sites, the National Heritage List for England, managed by Historic England. The National Record is a record of monuments and events irrespective of designation status, but it is not comprehensive and there is considerable overlap between this, and the records held in local Historic Environment Records (HERs).

This has caused confusion for researchers about which record they should be using and, where there is differing information about a site, which is the most up-to-date and reliable source. To counter this, Historic England is funding a series of projects for HERs to accession the National Record information for their areas under an Open Government License (OGL). The screenshot below is from the PowerBI dashboard used to summarise the progress to date.

National Security Copy

It is essential that information contained in HERs and the designation and marine records maintained by Historic England continue to be maintained and available to researchers and are not at risk of loss. To ensure this, the HIAS programme is mandating the use of Data Management Statements (DMS) for all HERs taking part in transfer of the National Record. The DMS includes details of backups, how information security is handled, disaster recovery planning and testing. Additionally, HERs sign up to an Access Protocol to ensure the data can be accessed if it was deemed to be at risk to ensure its preservation and, if necessary, transferred to a new host. Historic England is also ensuring that a DMS is created for all its information resources.

National Marine Heritage Record

Historic England is in the process of migrating the marine component of the National Record to a separate bespoke database named Mariner built using the open-source Arches platform. The data is used to inform responses to marine planning consultations, to contribute to the assessment of significance for heritage assets under consideration for statutory protection, and as a resource for broadscale thematic research projects. The need for a dependable and up-to-date marine record is demonstrated by the unprecedented scale of change to the seabed currently taking place as a result of increased offshore wind construction, aggregate extraction, and new pipelines as well as capital dredging to support ports and harbours.

Building on Historic England’s existing marine data, the National Marine Heritage Record (NMHR) will record heritage assets located between Mean High Water and the 200 nautical mile sea limit, as well as the tidal extent (at Mean High Water spring tides) of rivers, estuaries and creeks. This includes over 37,000 shipwrecks, including approximately 6,000 identified wreck sites, and a further 31,000 wrecks known only from documentary sources, including historic newspapers as well as authoritative secondary sources. In addition to shipwrecks, there is also information on approximately 7,500 unidentified seabed obstructions, approximately 1,000 isolated findspots, as well as activities, people, organisations and bibliographic sources.

It is a dynamic record continually enhanced with the results of thematic research projects, commercial fieldwork, and flowlines of information from external parties.

Enhanced data models allow for queries in relation to information previously only stored as unstructured information in text fields, providing a much richer dataset.

The NMHR will be a valuable resource for researchers, accessible via a publicly available version online, allowing users to undertake complex queries and export data to inform thematic research projects. It will also be cross searchable via the Heritage Gateway.

Heritage Gateway Improvement

The Heritage Gateway provides the national cross-searchable overview of records about the historic environment online.

HIAS is replacing the existing Heritage Gateway to create a more reliable and efficient website by making the best use of modern technologies, including APIs and Elasticsearch.

It will be a single, searchable data store that will offer reliable consistent searching across HERs, the National Heritage List for England, the National Record and other historic environment datasets, and will be accessed through redesigned search pages on the Historic England website.

The new Heritage Gateway is expected to launch in BETA version in June 2025 on the Historic England website and will be an important resource for researchers requiring a national overview of the historic environment in England.

OASIS V Reporting Tool

OASIS V is an improved version of the already established Online Access to the Index of Investigations (OASIS) reporting form.

As well as allowing practitioners to provide information about their investigations to HERs and national heritage organisations, it also allows researchers to share reports with HERs for public release in the ADS Library. It is designed to be inclusive of all types of historic environment investigations covering both terrestrial and marine environments from prehistory to modern and includes built heritage as well as archaeology and landscapes. It is linked to controlled vocabulary and reports can signpost to Regional Research Frameworks.

As with previous versions of OASIS, Historic England will create OASIS records for all our historic environment investigations and mandate the creation of OASIS records for all HE funded work. OASIS is also required in briefs for development control related recording and research as well as being used by the voluntary and academic sectors.

OASIS V will be a major benefit to researchers helping to ensure that HERs contain up-to-date information about recording and research in their areas and making reports available online. It will also assist researchers in sharing the results of their investigations.

Heritage Reference Data Management System

Historic England is working in partnership with the Getty Conservation Institute to develop a state-of-the-art tool for managing reference data.

• The project will deliver a standalone application, known as Lingo, based around the open-source software platform developed by the Arches Project team. This will facilitate the dissemination of heritage reference data, essential to effective information management and interoperability across the historic environment.
• Lingo will streamline current workflows and provide a ‘one-stop shop’ for the collaborative creation, management and digital publication of reference data. It will replace the functionality currently made available via a variety of tools and websites, including the interim Historic England reference data Interim system and heritagedata,org.
• With a public search interface and the use of images and documents to illustrate concepts it will deliver a knowledge organisation platform, which not only facilitates data exchange and cross-searching of multiple datasets but also provides a valuable information resource allowing users to discover more about the historic environment.
• It will support the development of networks and services that enable users to undertake comprehensive searches of the information holdings of Historic England and its partners.
• It will promote standards and best practice to enable interoperability with key partners and to encourage the interaction of the emerging historic environment information network with other thematic networks.

Conclusion: the impact of the programme

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Phil Carlisle, Hefin Meara, Jane Golding and Keith May for their input on the HIAS work packages they lead.

Further information