1. Recording public discovery: a democratic
approach?
dpett@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

2. Recording: one chance
 Our staff generally have one
chance to record
 Dissemination online is swift,
cheap, easy
 There is no other archaeological
database of this size
 It is underused for research at
present
 The data it contains can tell a
thousand stories of our shared
heritage

3. Objects by year
449,359 objects online @ 23:20 26/2/10 – 400K in 7 years!

4. Research in progress
 23 PhDs - 3 based at UCL
 6 AHRC projects - 1 at UCL
 36 Masters
 18 Undergraduates
 12 internal
 24 personal research
 You could join these researchers - ask me
afterwards

5. All PAS records mapped using GIS

6. How many virtual visitors?
Year Unique Visitors Number of visits Pages viewed Pages per visit
2004 84,174 289,595 4,847,892 16
2005 152,711 555,289 9,639,621 18
2006 247,103 720,369 15,469,127 21
Changed data collation to Google Analytics
2007 111,338 239,293 2,365,172 10
2008 196,113 326,408 5,384,746 15
Steady increase year by year; there are an estimated 8‐10,000 detectorists so
we reach a minimum of 100 times as many people per annum with no
discernable interest in collecting or discovering artefacts as those that do.

7. Have we stagnated?
Frankly – no.

8. PAS ICT Development
 Original database commissioned in 1998 – MS
Access
 6 Local installations for pilot FLOs
 Data collated once per annum and uploaded to
website in basic format

9. Nationalisation
• 2003 – The Scheme gains HLF funding
• Staff goes from 6 recording FLOS to 36
• Alice Grant consulting produces ICT outline
• OAD commissioned to produce new database
after competitive tendering

10. Calamity August 06 – OAD went bust

11. New database built in house

14. Enhanced geo data via flickr shapefiles
& Yahoo! geoplanet

15. Mapping discovery

16. High resolution zoom

19. New functions – data sourcing for
enhancement
 Uses wide range of
3rd party data
sources
 Extensive data
revisions
 Linked data

20. Enhanced bibliography via Amazon

21. Images disseminated via flickr

22. Enhanced experience
• Stable, human friendly URLs
• http://www.finds.org.uk/romancoins/personifications/named/
as/Apollo
• Using the gravatar web service to provide user avatars

23. Draw in data from dbpedia
for reuse
Pull data from our database
and the BM collections online
to teach numismatics

24. Parliamentary data

25. Guardian news articles about PAS

26. Introduced archaeological principles
Which allowed Philippa Walton to do her PhD more easily…..

27. Rurality of coin distributions?
PhD student at the Institute
comparing static data from
PAS, HERs and coin hoard
reports to produce a
synthesised map to update
Richard Reece’s study of
Roman coin finds. This will
change our knowledge of
Roman Britain to a ruralised
landscape.

28. Scheduled monument intersections
We can now double check grid references, inform finders that they might be
detecting in the wrong place etc.

29. Coming soon
Crowdsourced finds data – the public can record their own discoveries

30. What about Staffordshire?

31. Staffordshire

32. Flickr love

33. Website featured on BBC

34. BBC frontpage news trend

35. New site will launch very soon
Demonstration in the Clore foyer

36. And Roger Bland OBE likes it:
“Phenomenal! I've been having a
play.” – 21:30 26/2/10

37. The end.
Visit our website
@ www.finds.org.uk
Contact me:
dpett@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk