Beyond Rushmore and the Scottish Ten

Expanding the Scottish Heritage Archive

by Justin Barton
April 29, 2011
In March I traveled to Edinburgh and Glasgow to meet with our partners from the Centre of Digital Documentation and Visualization (CDDV), which is comprised of Historic Scotland's Conservation Group and Glasgow School of Arts' Digital Design Studio.

Although we've been working closely with the CDDV for over 2 years on the digital preservation of Mount Rushmore and the other sites of the Scottish Ten, our relationship is not limited to these ten iconic projects. We are also working closely on other current and past projects to disseminate the digital data via the CyArk website, including Rosslyn Chapel and Stirling Castle. Historic Scotland (HS), in particular, is assessing it's entire inventory of over 340 historic properties in its care. Many of which will be digitally surveyed for posterity. CyArk is collaborating with HS to lend some of our expertise in data management and web accessibility.

Therefore I spent a week working closely with HS to introduce some proposed solutions, namely our very own SiteManager GIS, a web-based geo-referenced database that allows for quick web publication. The HS team and I were able to populate a small sampling of multimedia content from the site of Skara Brae (part of the larger Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site and one of the Scottish Ten projects). Initial results of our database's robustness were well received and the collaboration is moving forward to have the HS laser scan team complete the population of the database with Skara Brae and the other Neolithic sites scanned in Orkney. We'll also be exchanging ideas for customizing the database for their unique needs, including remote, field data entry on 3G-enabled devices.

I am very excited at the prospect of the great outcomes ahead, both in improvements to our SiteManager GIS system as well as the fantastic projects being added to the archive. Stay tuned!
A good-humored relationship exists with CyArk and the HS crew, where business can still be fun! Or my presentation was just really witty.
The HS staff look onward toward the screen as I explain what work we placed from the Neolithic Orkney project into the CyArk SiteManager GIS.