The King in the Car Park

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VBB V
VBB Feb 7, 2013 11:42:56
Replying to Littlestone

Littlestone wrote:
VBB wrote:
To be fair there are many very generous academics and heritage professionals, they give their own time and put a hand in their pocket, and they have encouraged and supported public interest and research. What the public need though is access to information and learned journals in particular, otherwise too many spend time barking up a wrong tree.
You can say that about any professional body, whether it be banking or health care. The problem occurs when a culture of ‘we know best’ (within those professions) prevails and the system becomes either moribund or descends into chaos.

The public not only needs access to information it also needs to be provided with information with which it can engage and get excited about – either through well-produced TV programmes or off-the-shelf publications such as Brit Arch or Current Archaeology. I disagree entirely that it needs ‘learned journals’ (though the option is always there) those are probably best left to the ‘learned’ amongst us ;-)

From TV progs to newspapers and mags, the public is bombarded with material that it gets excited about, but when it then leads to members of the public promoting their own agendas, public access to learned publications would enable engagement with secondary sources that cite primary source material that takes discussion closer to what happened in history.

L Littlestone
Littlestone Feb 7, 2013 12:07:23
Replying to VBB

VBB wrote:
From TV progs to newspapers and mags, the public is bombarded with material that it gets excited about, but when it then leads to members of the public promoting their own agendas, public access to learned publications would enable engagement with secondary sources that cite primary source material that takes discussion closer to what happened in history.
In the context of archaeology (which we’re talking about here) the public is hardly ‘bombarded’ with material. Even at the height of the Time Team programmes there was not that much on television dealing with the subject. As for archaeological magazines; Brit Arch used to be available in W H Smiths (I don’t know if it still is) and I’m not sure if Current Archaeology is available other than by subscription. In other words, there’s not that much out there on archaeology with which the public can easily engage or be excited/inspired by.

I’m not sure what you mean by, “... members of the public promoting their own agendas...” Can you say more?