Heritage Site Media pros and cons - Help please

[sarahlouise]

Hi All

This is a bit of a random topic but I am researching for a paper evaluating the potential media for addressing a specific interpretation issue for a heritage site. I am looking at interpreting a townscape, where people live and it has very narrow streets so interpretation panels etc.. not a great solution.

I wanted to look into the possibility of modern media such as downloading interpretation to your phone or MP3 player.
There is little out there discussing this though and wondered if anyone knew of some easily accessible info. Particularly actually downloading it at the site, rather than downloading it at home.

In Leith in Edinburgh there was some sort of walk you could do around the streets and when you saw a symbol on a lamp post you could download info. Unfortunately I did not pay much attention at the time, except thinking - what a good idea! Now I can not find anything about it - maybe it was not even how I thought it was. Anyone heard of anything similar?

Looking for discussion but also any technical info about such media and any help gratefully received, although its kinda of limited to this w/e. Also anything on challenges of interpreting towns or cities where people live and work, would be useful too.:face-approve:

[BAJR]

I look forward to this too!

[trowelmonkey]

If it ever existed, these are the people who could tell you something about it:

Museums and Galleries
City Art Centre,
2 Market Street, Edinburgh
EH1 1DE
Telephone: 0131 529 3993
E-mail: museumsandgalleries@edinburgh.gov.uk

Years ago NMS Museum of Flight had a service where you could ring up for an audio tour via mobile. I never did it myself, but I remember a guide telling me about it. I think it was because it was manned much less than it is now. These were pre-concord days. I have no idea what it's like now.

I think creating a smart phone app using google earth as a backing would definately be the way forward.:face-approve:

Good luck.

[GnomeKing]

Try emailing Syndney University Archaeological Computing Laboratory, or similar...

[ken_whittaker]

Sarahlouise

Suggest you have a look at a uesful publication produced by the Royal Commission in Wales called 'History in your Hands'.

http://www.rcahmw.gov.uk/HI/ENG/Publicat...p/?book=14

Describes various initiatives the RCHMW have developed in the use of hand held mobile devices to access various forms of interpretation material. You might want to contact Tom Pert to discuss further developments since publication. I get the impression there is a lot of innovation comming down the line.

Regards

Ken

[mpoole]

I would like to comment that it should not be necessary to access the information directly, via a phone. I have an iPod, and would be happy to download information in advance, or perhaps from a wireless connection at the site.

[Steve]

This is something that I've been experimenting with for the last few months. It's a great idea and I think it will be realised very soon.

I've built an iPhone application which delivers content to the user based on their current location. Given the datasource it would be fairly simple to feed archaeology/heritage data to an iPhone based on it's location. I'm using secure web services with inbuilt authentication handlers to send data back and forth to a database. Without jargon, I can register an account on my iPhone so I can send comments back to the database for any record.

This model will truly place the end user in direct contact with heritage data, if that were the end goal. My own view is that people with smartphones should be able to interact with the records like this and add comments/ratings/photos/videos to the record from their phones.

In my application I can send georeferenced photos via the web service and then use a web site to display these photos on a map. These can also appear on a map on the iPhone.

So technically this is possible now. I'll be writing some archaeology-based iPhone applications very shortly after I've got this first one through the app store.

[Jeff S]

Obviously not a townscape, but Culloden has a rather nifty piece of kit that you walk around with and is then triggered when you reach certain points of the battlefield - a good way of interpreting and presenting types of site that can be tricky to appreciate.

[kevin wooldridge]

In the Rogaland county of west Norway (the area around Stavanger) lots of heritage sites have a notice board with a variety of phone numbers. You choose the appropriate language (Norwegian, English, German, Spanish etc) ring the number or send a text and you get the heritage interpretation downloaded to your phone. I imagined that if this has reached a fairly small area of western Norway that it mst be fairly common in the rest of the world....guess I could be wrong though....

[BAJR]

Preston Grange Mining Museum also used to have a similar system (I don't know why I think it was Brian Blessed talking to you--- perhaps wishfull thinking that when you called up to find out about the pit head, Brian would shout at you)

anyway... here it is

http://www.prestongrange.org/tour/