17th November 2011, 04:51 PM
Marcus Brody Wrote:I don't think bunnyhugger was saying that the list itself was difficult to find, simply that it was difficult to use. For example, if I wanted to find a contractor to undertake work close to Perth, I'd naturally assume that selecting the box marked 'Scotland' and hitting search would give me a list of contractors based in Scotland. However, on the first page of results, only one of the contractors listed is actually based in Scotland, and it's the same on other pages - contractors based as far away as Bristol being included in the results. Presumably this is because all these contractors have indicated that they'd be prepared to undertake work anywhere in Britain, and there's nothing wrong with that, but for the person who's building a small extension on their house and needs to find an archaeological contractor, it's not as helpful as it could be. While a list maintained by a local authority may also contain contractors from far afield, simply because they've asked to be included on it, it's likely to be more geographically-focused, and so more likely to be helpful to the first-time small-scale developer.
See my comment on this very issue on about page 1 of this discussion. The 'find an RAO' function on the IfA website is basically useless, or at best very confusing. BAJRs own version (based on Google maps I assume, I haven't look at it recently) is far better as you can actually search regionally in far more detail. At present if I were a confused developer trying to find an archaeologist and I used the IfA's site (as might be reccommended by the local authority) I would be even more confused. Is the IfA going to sort out this sort of frankly quite basic problem?