14th March 2009, 06:11 PM
I have recently become aware of some facts and figures which might (or might not) have a bearing on this debate, and, since they were at my fingertips I thought I would put them up here.
Firstly...
Gary told us on 13th March that "...at the time of writing, 14219 of the 16233 records on the UKDFD database have not been recorded elsewhere". For the sake of argument let us asume that these 2014 are in fact recorded with the PAS or directly with HERs.
Interestingly on that very same day I was given a report by a PAS person. In 2007 alone 66,311 archaeological objects were recorded on the PAS database. Moreover "on 13th March 2009 there were 376,957 objects published on the scheme's website".
Gary's 14,219 objects therefore represent about 3.6% of the total 393,190 objects recorded by both PAS and UKDFD.
In relation to vulpes' comments, it is therefore perhaps not surprising that HERs prefer to use 96.4% of the data which is in a compatible form, and not spend a lot of time chasing the remaining data which is not compatible with their systems.
and secondly...
Gary's site has been online since 2005, so let's call that four years - an average of around 4,000 objects per year.
The PAS has been in operation since 1997, so let's call that 12 years - an average of around 31,400 objects per year.
So I would conclude from this that for every metal-detectorist recording with UKDFD there are 8 who prefer to record with the PAS. From this it could be argued that the PAS might, in fact, be more representative of the metal-detecting community than UKDFD.
Firstly...
Gary told us on 13th March that "...at the time of writing, 14219 of the 16233 records on the UKDFD database have not been recorded elsewhere". For the sake of argument let us asume that these 2014 are in fact recorded with the PAS or directly with HERs.
Interestingly on that very same day I was given a report by a PAS person. In 2007 alone 66,311 archaeological objects were recorded on the PAS database. Moreover "on 13th March 2009 there were 376,957 objects published on the scheme's website".
Gary's 14,219 objects therefore represent about 3.6% of the total 393,190 objects recorded by both PAS and UKDFD.
In relation to vulpes' comments, it is therefore perhaps not surprising that HERs prefer to use 96.4% of the data which is in a compatible form, and not spend a lot of time chasing the remaining data which is not compatible with their systems.
and secondly...
Gary's site has been online since 2005, so let's call that four years - an average of around 4,000 objects per year.
The PAS has been in operation since 1997, so let's call that 12 years - an average of around 31,400 objects per year.
So I would conclude from this that for every metal-detectorist recording with UKDFD there are 8 who prefer to record with the PAS. From this it could be argued that the PAS might, in fact, be more representative of the metal-detecting community than UKDFD.