ABSTRACT
The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland maintains the national record of the archaeology, built and marine heritage of Scotland. Since 1998, information held on behalf of the public has been accessible online through the Canmore database and, from 2003, through PastMap, developed in partnership with Historic Scotland and several of Scotland's Historic Environment Records. Web portals provide the ‘shop window’ for RCAHMS, not only in terms of information curated but also increasingly through online sales. However, moving from the web as publication towards contributing to the web of data, or even more fundamentally simply sharing information with others, is constrained by a number of factors. This paper uses a number of case studies to share the experience of digital partnerships from our perspective as early adopters, data owners and data publishers, focusing particularly on the challenges of moving towards Open Data.
