In 2006, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee held an inquiry into Science and Heritage (for a copy of the report visit the House of Lords web page: www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/lords_s_t_select/heritage.cfm ) Among its recommendations published later that year was that “the heritage sector should come together in developing a broad-based national strategy for heritage science”. They called for the strategy to be developed as a “bottom up” strategy with considerable input from the “users and doers of heritage science, so that the many institutions that play a part in the heritage science sector can share a sense of ownership”.
This project has deliberately taken a very broad definition of “heritage” which will encompass both movable heritage (museums and art collections, libraries and archives) as well as immovable heritage (archaeological remains, buildings, landscapes and townscape).
The strategy steering group are keen that as many people as possible participate in the development of the strategy; each of the three reports, and the final strategy will be made available through the website for comment, (for more information, please go to www.heritagesciencestrategy.org.uk ). The timetable overleaf (click here) outlines the main steps in the development of, and opportunities for external participation in, this strategy. At this stage, we are collecting together existing, relevant, UK and international heritage and heritage science strategies and beginning the process of drafting the three reports. Please contact the strategy coordinator Jim Williams NHSS@english-heritage.org.uk with details of any strategy of which you feel we should be aware, or any information you think would be useful in producing our three reports. In order to avoid duplication, and paper or IT overload, we would be grateful if you didn’t send any documents, but just include details of the title, date, and information about where a copy can be obtained. These existing strategies will be listed on the website in the coming weeks and wherever possible, electronic versions will be available to download.
Link reference: http://www.heritagesciencestrategy.org.uk
