

3.2.6 Q4: Which of these resources do you use while finding out about Archaeology and the Historic Environment?

An initial glance at the use of HEIRs amongst respondents may seem disappointing. Of the 25 resources listed, only 7 averaged over 50% of the population having ever used their resource. Of these 7, the highest rated is the BBC (not an HEIR per se) and the next highest is SMR (Sites and Monuments Record), which is really an umbrella category covering the many different SMRs that may or may not be online across the country (it is possible there might have been confusion for this category). This leaves 5 actual HEIRs, none of whom manage to reach out to over 65% of the respondents, despite question 2 showing that most respondents look for online resources at least weekly.

Nevertheless, things look a bit brighter when 'not heard of' results are looked at. Here, there are only 4 HEIRs that are unknown to over half the surveyed population. For each resource there is currently, on average, 21% of the community who knows of the resource, but for one reason or another, chooses not to use it. At the worst, this might be because they do not fully understand the resources' capability or purpose. Hopefully, in most cases it is because they do not need the information that HEIR offers, and therefore recognize the resource from link pages or news, but have not yet had the occasion to use it.

Optimistically, every site does have its small, dedicated group of frequent users; therefore none of the sites are being unused. Overall, HEIRs holding National Monuments Records did relatively well, with the overall population of each country being almost proportionally reflected in the use of their specific HEIRs (English NMRs being more popular than Scottish ones, which are more popular than Welsh).

Section Resources

Graphs / Charts

graph 326
Figure 6: Question 4 Responses

Associated Tables

Q4 Total pop xls pdf
Q4 Groups xls pdf