Top prize for ScotlandsPlaces

1 May 2010

The innovative ScotlandsPlaces website has been awarded the prize for ‘most beneficial information service’ at the Association for Geographic Information (AGI) annual conference in Glasgow.

A collaboration between RCAHMS, the National Archives of Scotland (NAS), the Scottish Government and the University of Edinburgh, ScotlandsPlaces brings together historical data about the people and places of the nation. An easy to use gazetteer and interactive map-search interface allows users to access invaluable RCAHMS and NAS resources ranging from listings of land ownership and Register House records to photographs, plans and drawings of the nation’s buildings and archaeology.

The website has the ability to grow and develop through the inclusion of data about Scotland’s places from other organisations and partnerships within the heritage sector.

Both AGI delegates and the competition judges voted ScotlandsPlaces first in its category.  In addition, the website was commended as an example of a potential INSPIRE-based Spatial Data Infrastructure for Scotland.

RCAHMS also had a second entry at the conference, with the Defining Scotland’s Places pilot project (a partnership with Historic Scotland the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers:Scotland and the Sites and Monuments Record Forum) placing second with the delegates and fourth with the judges in the category of “most pragmatic enabling idea”.

The aim of Defining Scotland’s Places is to pool data resources to produce a digital map that defines the known extent of Scotland’s archaeological and historical sites.