What We Do
RCAHMS was established in 1908. We are an executive non-departmental government body financed by the Scottish Parliament through Historic Scotland and the Scottish Government Directorate for Culture, External Affairs and Tourism. We are overseen by a Chairman and nine Commissioners.
Our role is to:
- Identify, survey and interpret the built environment of Scotland
- Preserve, care for and add to the information and the items in our national collection
- Promote understanding, education and enjoyment through interpretation of the information we collect and the items we look after
Our current Business Strategy for 2010-2015 - called Future RCAHMS - defines our four strategic priorities:
1. Inspire learning and intellectual curiosity in our national culture and identity at home and worldwide
2. Continue to update our national collection through field investigation, research and selective collecting, and make RCAHMS the first port of call for information about Scotland’s places
3. Widen digital access to information on Scotland’s places, making it more interactive and an integral part of the burgeoning world-wide network of cultural heritage data
4. Achieve further efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability in the use of government resources, and build on our capacity to generate non-government income
Our national collection contains some 3 million photographs, maps, drawings and documents of Scotland’s historic and built environment, as well as more than 18 million military reconnaissance images from across the globe in one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of historical aerial photography. The collection is made widely available to the public through our online services, in exhibitions and publications, and can be browsed in person at the RCAHMS Search Room in Edinburgh.
We also make accessible the Scran learning website with over 360,000 images, videos and sounds from museums, galleries, archives and the media.
As perceptions of the historic environment change, as knowledge and research develops, and as landscapes and townscapes are built, demolished and radically altered, our work remains as essential today as it was when RCAHMS was founded in 1908.
