ResearchBuzz

The Cultural Landscape Foundation has launched a database of “Cultural Landscapes” and it’s called What’s Out There. Currently there are over 380 notations in the database with more to be added over time. It’s available at http://www.tclf.org/landscapes.

Which is all very nice but what the heck is a cultural landscape? The site describes cultural landscapes like this, that they: “Provide a sense of place and identity; they map our relationship with the land over time; and they are part of our national heritage and each of our lives.” I saw a variety of places listed in this database, including buildings, parks, farms, and even cemeteries.

When I first went to the site I was confused because while there was a link to do an advanced search and a simple keyword search on the front page, I didn’t see a place to browse what was listed. Turns out there’s a browsable listing on the advanced search page. You can do an advanced search for finding locations by state, landscape style, region, design type, and more. The listings are shown in a table with columns for landscape title, designed firm, landscape type, and landscape style.

I decided to look at cultural landscapes in Indiana. I got five results: two cemeteries, a public park, a garden, and the grounds of an institution. You can click on the title of the landscape for more information but what you get will vary a lot. For example, you might want to look at the Miller Garden. You’ll get facts about the landscape (type, who designed it, a pointer to a map and so forth.) You will get a photo and a link to more photos. You will get related content about the Miller Garden from other parts of the site. However, you won’t get a capsule summary of the landmark as you might for other landmarks. In the case of the Lindenwood cemetery, you will only get the most basic information with not even a photograph. For an example of a site that does have a writeup, check out Ohio’s Alms Park.

I’m afraid I still don’t have a good hold on what a cultural landscape is but this site is fun to browse, with a number of different categories and places all over the country. It’d be excellent if each site’s listing could link to a Flickr search; I’d love to see more views of the Miller Garden.

A database of information about 280,000 Scottish archaeological and architecture sites has been updated with some interactive features. I’m glad to learn about it, because I’d never heard of it before. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland has its database, Canmore, available at http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/ .

The front page has a simple keyword search available or you can use an extensive advanced search form that allows you to search by location, site type, ID, online collections only, and more.

I stuck with the simple site search and looked for castle, restricting my results to online items only. I found 1,482 results. Results (it looks like you can get only 500 at a time) are listed 20 to a page, with a thumbnail of the site, site name, site type, council, and collection items. There are two types of collection items: those that are online (those are listed first) and those that are available in the search room (and those may be images, maps, manuscripts, etc. There is information about how to order them but they are not available online.)

Each listing has its own page; here’s the one for Castle Tioram.There are some images available for the site as well as architectural and archaeological descriptions and book citations. Visitors are invited to submit their own sites and images as well.

If you’re less interested in browsing the database and more interested in looking at the images, you might want to check out the RCAHMS Flickr stream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/24880758@N02/. There are 228 images here covering everything from distilleries to castle ruins to rock carvings.