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Parks & Gardens UK project New vistas for historic designed landscape records. Rachael Sturgeon Project Manager, PGDS Janet E. Davis Web Manager, PGDS. Project aims. Encouraging volunteers to research & record Collating information from other sources. Creating database web site
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Parks & Gardens UK projectNew vistas for historic designed landscape records. Rachael Sturgeon Project Manager, PGDS Janet E. Davis Web Manager, PGDS
Project aims • Encouraging volunteers to research & record • Collating information from other sources • Creating • database • web site • educational resources
Specific project aims • 6,000 records of sites in England & Wales • 1,000 records of sites in Scotland & Northern Ireland • References records • Archives sources • Associated Person records • Associated Organisation records • Digital images & digital image records • 20 themed educational resources
Who is involved? • Parks & Gardens Data Services • not-for-profit company set up by: and • Volunteers • Supported by • IT contractor • hosting service
Who is involved? Stakeholders Advisory Panel Experts include representatives from: English Heritage RCAMHW Hampshire County Council Consultative Group Volunteers organisations - NADFAS, County Gardens Trusts, NCCPG Universities Culture 24
Who is it for? Experts Non-experts General public Volunteers Tourists Site owners/managers Archaeologists Historians Heritage professionals Planning professionals Design professionals UK schoolchildren HE & FE students Life-long Learners
Accessibility issues - physical and technological • Front end of web site • Need to allow for: • people with disabilities, especially with visual impairments, including colour blindness; • slow dial-up internet access • older hardware and software
Intellectual accessibility - navigation Building a semantic bridge using navigation • Providing methods to access the database records that do not require: • prior knowledge of historic parks & gardens; • knowledge of UK geography or local authority areas; • good spelling or high level of literacy.
Intellectual accessibility - images Building a semantic bridge using description • People ‘read’ pictures according to what they know. • Need to describe what is where. • What is obvious to one expert will not be obvious to another from a different discipline. • Accessibility for visually-impaired.
Intellectual accessibility - writing style Building a semantic bridge using writing style • Using plain English or providing explanations of specialist terms • Abbreviations and acronyms written in full. • ‘Friendly’ but objective style. • Concise, short sentences.
Controlled vocabulary Example of early controlled vocabulary list for terms to describe the context or principal building for historic parks and gardens.
Back end content editor • Designed to be used by staff with no or little HTML knowledge. • Incorporates easy entry of basic metadata.
Front end content editor • Next stage - letting volunteers add their own articles from the front end.
Conclusion Accessibility Sustainability Delivery of content www.parksandgardens.ac.uk