A new Heritage Gateway is needed! 

Exegesis (now part of Idox Geospatial) have been involved in all stages of the planning and design of a new architecture, this time based around harvesting datasets into a central repository against which all querying and presentation would be undertaken.

To make this simple for contributing Historic Environment Records (HERs), we've created and launched the new HBSMR Gateway 2.0 API, which allows Historic England to harvest the HER data easily and quickly every few hours/days. The new API is fully configurable to control which records and attributes are published.

The new API is already working successfully for ten early-adopting HERs, and will be rolled out to others through 2025.

Further information from Crispin Flower

Exmoor National Park Authority (ENPA) commissioned Exegesis to upgrade their existing Exegesis HER website to use the current version of HBSMR Web. The site provides information on all known archaeological sites and historic buildings within the National Park; from the earliest recorded human history to recent times. Earthworks, ruins, buildings, landscapes, industrial remains, historic boundaries and routes, military sites and find sites are all included. 

HBSMR Web sites are built within a cloudscribe Content Management System, which gave ENPA the ability to control the appearance and content of web pages within the site. The new site also provides the ability to perform powerful but simple google-like searching across all HBSMR modules. 

Visit the Website: www.exmoorher.co.uk.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

Church Heritage Cymru contains over 1,350 records for church buildings in Wales. As well as GIS information for each record, Church Heritage Cymru contains fields for a wide range of heritage data. Examples of this include church plans, architectural information, archaeological descriptions and statutory designation information. It is also possible to add details about building fabric and other church features using terms from the FISH thesaurus. The system also gives users the ability to link people (architects, authors, etc.) and sources (articles, manuscripts, etc.) to a number of church assets. There is also the option to enter information about worship times and facilities, as well as links to local church websites. 

The information contained within has been developed and added to through desk-based research and fieldwork reports, as well as through local initiatives and thematic projects. 

Further information from Crispin Flower.

A major aim of the project was to develop an online faculty application system for the Church of England. This system is used to digitally process applications which propose changes to the fabric of church buildings, features within the church and the churchyard. The system aims to simplify the faculty application process by automatically inputting information about each asset from the Church Heritage Record (which has shared development with Church in Wales Church Heritage Record).

Exegesis have developed a number of tools to simplify and automate the faculty application process. The system allows for the creation of legal forms for each application, required by the Church of England. It also allows users to keep up to date with their workload, providing them with a dashboard showing the applications and messages relevant to their role and any cases which require their attention. Users are also notified by email if they are required to work on an application. We have added a number of other useful tools, for example the automatic production of meeting agendas for the Diocesan Advisory Committee.

Since its launch at the beginning of 2015, 21 dioceses have signed up and well over 1000 applications have been processed.

Further information from Crispin Flower or Steve Ellwood.

PDNPA has maintained SHINE (Selected Heritage Inventory for Natural England) records for the Derbyshire part of the Park since the inception of the scheme. Once it was decided that PDNPA would maintain SHINE data for the whole of the Park, the need for a Park-wide HBSMR dataset became apparent.

In Spring 2014 exeGesIS undertook the merging of the five constituent local authority HBSMR datasets. Although the five datasets from Cheshire, Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and Staffordshire all share the same structure, the technical process of merging the data was nonetheless challenging. Specific issues that had to be overcome were different back-end database engines, different GIS software, spatial selection of records for inclusion in the merged dataset, differences in look-up table data, differences in thesaurus candidate terms, different period/date interpretations, different use of user defined-fields etc. Most importantly, the merged dataset had to provide an accurate image of the contributing datasets and, although new Peak District UIDs were generated, the original references needed to be maintained.

The merged dataset was installed together with HBSMR v4 in the Bakewell offices of the PDNPA in early May 2014. The next phase of the project will be to define effective data exchange mechanisms between the Park and the other authorities that use HBSMR, so that all records benefit from the emergence of new heritage information.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

Early in the planning phase of the project Cambridgeshire’s Historic Environment Team approached exeGesIS with a view to developing an approach that would allow the new archive catalogue to be integrated into the Cambridgeshire Historic Environment Record (CHER), thereby allowing full cross-referencing of archive items with Monument and Event records.

The solution that emerged from discussions between Cambridgeshire’s archaeologists and exeGesIS heritage data specialists, was based around the County’s existing use of the Historic Buildings, Sites and Monuments Record system. Two custom administrator functions would be developed; the first to create spreadsheets that would be populated with archive metadata during the cataloguing process and the second to read the spreadsheet information back in to HBSMR, creating a source record for each archive item.

An important feature of the development was to ensure that archive items could be quickly recovered from DeepStore and returned to Cambridge. This relied on the inclusion of the Deep Store reference within the HBSMR Source record. This was achieved by labelling each of the archive boxes with a pre-prepared DeepStore barcode label. The barcode was scanned using an inexpensive, off-the-shelf scanner and the barcode data was automatically recorded alongside the other metadata in the spreadsheet for later upload to HBSMR.

The system has now been in use since March 2013 and over 17,000 archive items have been catalogued and over 10,000 boxes have been dispatched to DeepStore. Over 230 archive boxes have been successfully recalled to Cambridge so far for involvement in PhD research and public engagement opportunities.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

The Council’s nature conservation officers wished to maintain this data in HBSMR, as Designation data, and required a number of customisations to allow the data to be incorporated and managed.

exeGesIS was contracted to create a custom module for HBSMR to hold data for multiple surveys for each Local Wildlife Site designation record. Summary data was displayed on a custom tab on the Designation form that is only visible for Local Wildlife Site records.

A button next to each entry provides access to detailed survey information which is displayed on a custom pop-up form.

Local Wildlife Site searches can be executed from the Designations Index Form.

The customisations were successfully delivered and installed in early December 2013.

Further information from Keith Westcott

The main technical aims of the project were to:

• Implement, test and evaluate a solution to make the county’s digital HER accessible to district council conservation officers.
• Digitise and make available information currently held only as a hard copy.

A custom website was identified as the most cost-effective technical solution.  For reasons of privacy it was decided that the website would have restricted access. exeGesIS was contracted to work with the steering committee to develop the website as an effective tool to inform planning advice and decisions.  The system was to be map-based, easy to use and was to include comprehensive, up-to-date data.

The website that resulted provides access to data on designated heritage assets, archaeological casework, consultations, fieldwork and site visits, historic sites and finds, listed building descriptions, conservation area appraisals and primary source material references for further research.

Large quantities of photographs, mainly supplied by the district councils were scanned and passed to the HER team for inclusion in the record.

Users have reported that the map-based user interface is highly functional and popular. The system is heavily used and interactions between the county HER and the conservation officers in the district councils have increased. The system has contributed effectively to agile working and a reduction in reliance on hard-copy images and other information.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

The Norfolk Heritage Explorer website has recently been given a facelift, becoming the first of our heritage websites to use the mojoPortal CMS. One of the many benefits of the mojoPortal CMS is the amount of control this gives the client over the content and styling of their site. The Norfolk Historic Environment Service was keen to take advantage of this and created the look and feel of their new website themselves.

The website still includes all the functionality that is supplied as standard with any site published using HBSMR-web, namely a choice of search interfaces and a powerful interactive map (see below) which uses our Web Map Toolkit.

In addition, the clients are able to create and manage dynamic content, such as a News Feed, independently of HBSMR, using plug-in modules supplied as part of the mojoPortal CMS.

Further information from Crispin Flower

HBSMR Gateway is a web service API for HBSMR. When a user searches on the Heritage Gateway, the search is sent to the HBSMR Gateway web service run by each HER, or Exegesis. The HBSMR Gateway processes the search and returns the results as MIDAS XML, which is then transformed into HTML in the user's web browser.

We subsequently worked with English Heritage and ESRI UK developers to integrate mapping into the Heritage Gateway. This became available in April 2012 and map-based searching is now available for nearly 20 HER/SMRs.

We also collaborated with English Heritage to enable image publication on Heritage Gateway via a LibraryLink Web Service, as shown below.

Further information from Crispin Flower

The website enables access to information from a number of National Park Authority partnered projects, including Mires-on-the-Moors and the Exmoor Moorland Landscape Partnership Scheme.

The Exmoor's Past website has delivered much improved access to the information held within the ENPHER, and the inclusion of additional, interpretive material, linked to detailed records within the HER, provides a significantly enhanced user-experience, which in turn encourages wider audiences and greater participation.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

The core of the site is the interactive map of heritage assets, including listed buildings, places of worship, historic gardens, conservation areas, and a 5% sample of the county’s archaeological sites. Map and attribute data are drawn live from the Lincolnshire County HER via the HBSMR Gateway, rather than being managed in a separate database. The map uses the OpenLayers API, with free Ordnance Survey Open Data and Bing maps.

From the map, volunteers download and print a user-friendly survey-pack for the sites/buildings they wish to survey, including everything known about the site, a location map, and a site-specific survey form. Once the fieldwork has been done, the volunteers enter the survey results back into the web site, along with digital photos. Project staff validate the surveys to ensure consistency, and can also view on-line statistics on the complete dataset as it accumulates, and download the data for further analysis.

Further information is available from Crispin Flower, Liz Bates at the Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire on 01529 461499 or www.lincshar.org.

The project included the scanning of approximately 90 archive storage boxes containing paper HER Monument records and oblique aerial photographs, 9 archive storage boxes containing c400 Event reports in the process of being added into the HER, c1,000 plans of A3 size and upwards, Conservation Area files, Parish Survey files, c1,600 Historic Buildings and Buildings at Risk photographs and c7,500 slide photographs. In all some 13,000 images were scanned. Historic vertical aerial photographs from the 1940’s through to 1996 were also scanned and geo-referenced in order to enable viewing within GIS software.

All scans were of archival quality, documents were scanned as PDF/As using OCR, so as to make them searchable.

The scanned images and documents were linked to HBSMR records using our LibraryLink package. Links were created at the database level by exeGesIS, thereby avoiding a very drawn out manual process. This approach was made possible by adherance to a strict file/folder naming convention on the part of the scanning contractor. It has enabled available documents and images associated with a particular record to be displayed on screen at the touch of a button.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

The Exploring Kent’s Past project sought to make these resources as widely available as possible. Previously, the only way to see this information was to make an appointment at County Hall in Maidstone. Now users can access the Historic Environment Record from the comfort of their own homes. The project was supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the website was built by exeGesIS using HBSMR Gateway and HBSMR-web.

An important part of the project was to encourage the use of heritage information within education. To help meet this aim three educational packs, for use by school children as part of the national curriculum, were created.

An interactive map with search tools is provided.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

The Highland Council Historic Environment team (which at the time included one of our current HBSMR Consultants) had already made preparations for this by having their entire paper archive scanned and catalogued. As part of the data migration we were then able to link these files (tens of thousands of them) to the HER database records via our LibraryLink product. In turn the records and the associated images and files were then published online using the HBSMR Gateway and HBSMR-web.

The online Highland HER was launched in August 2008 and has since gone from strength to strength. The site is updated every couple of months and community groups are encouraged to submit information about their own projects. Thematic content, such as the Community Projects section of the site, featured New Additions, and a range of other resources, is created using the HBSMR Themes module.

As with our newer HBSMR-web product, based on the mojoPortal CMS, the original version of HBSMR-web used by The Highland Council has allowed them to customise many areas of the site to better suit their users. A survey of website users reported high levels of satisfaction with the resource.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

• To promote the understanding, study and awareness of Cheshire’s heritage to a wide community audience, by providing information in readily accessible formats
• To reach wider audiences by targeting community venues
• To improve the quality of the information provided to existing users
• To deliver educational benefits to the wider community of all ages, through increasing access to information about archaeology in Cheshire

A significant part of the project was the development of the Revealing Cheshire's Past website. Data curated in HBSMR was published to the web using HBSMR Gateway and HBSMR Web.

The Revealing Cheshire's Past website is an online version of the Cheshire Historic Environment Record. It is provided for general, non-commercial, HER enquiries from members of the public, students, researchers etc. The Cheshire HER contains over 10,000 records on a wide variety of buildings and sites, from finds of prehistoric flint tools to medieval castles and Second World War pillboxes, within the County of Cheshire (the area covered by Cheshire West & Chester, Cheshire East, Halton and Warrington Councils).

Users can access the site as 'Guests' or they can register and log-in, which provides a greater variety of search options, images and more detailed records.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

The database contains over 17,000 records - not only of traditional archaeological sites like excavations, earthworks and stray artefacts but also historic buildings and landscapes, and covers periods from the emergence of the earliest humans to the twentieth century.

The website may be explored using text searches or by searching the digital map, as shown below. It also provides access to a timeline with links to period overview essays and interactive content including a number of games.

The project was also conceived to deliver dedicated educational material, specifically for use at Key Stages 2 and 3. The HBSMR Themes module was used to create and publish the new educational content. The site also provides guidance on how to start researching the past and getting involved in archaeology.

In mid-2010 the site received a significant facelift and further developments are planned.

Further information from Crispin Flower.