Internet powerful tool for heritage research. Why was it ignored?

To the Editor:

I'm in full agreement with Prof. Agar Adamson's column, "Let's Light the Fire for Our Heritage", The Advertiser, March 27, 2007.

Prof. Adamson wrote: "...the Voluntary Planning Committee (VPC) undertook a province-wide study of heritage... The VPC report made public last December deserves the widest possible distribution and study by the members of the House of Assembly. The report contains 59 recommendations..."

By and large the report covers the ground well, but there is one gaping omission; there’s only a passing mention, as an afterthought, of how the Internet could be used to promote our heritage.

On page 11 of the report: "Respondents to our interim report said that it did not acknowledge the tremendous potential of the Internet to help achieve the proposed vision for heritage."

This is astonishing. They actually wrote and released an interim report that failed to acknowledge the existence and potential of the Internet, and had to be alerted belatedly to this oversight.

Then again, maybe it’s not so astonishing. In 2006, after all the hoopla during the previous decade about electronic information, a Heritage Task Force was appointed in which no member had any background and none had any visible interest in modern electronic distribution of information!

At the last moment, the Task Force was awakened to the existence of the WWW: "The opportunities to exploit the Internet appear endless."

But the final report contains just one recommendation, barely three sentences, suggesting how the Internet could be used to further the preservation and accessibility of our heritage. Worse, that lone recommendation focuses exclusively on video on the Internet, a format that is effective but is also enormously expensive.

There’s no possibility in the foreseeable future that Nova Scotia could set up and operate "a provincial website" to supply "video" to promote heritage. This recommendation is akin to suggesting that Nova Scotia should establish its own space program.

There are many ways the Internet could be used effectively, within our means, to promote our heritage. The report could easily have used several pages to explore and evaluate the extensive Nova Scotia heritage resources now available on the Internet, but all that was overlooked. There was nobody on the Heritage Task Force that had any idea this stuff already exists.

Prof. Adamson mentioned "Wilf Carter". If you google on 'Wilf Carter' you get 186,000 hits; two of the top four are for a website right here in Kings County. The Heritage Task Force had no idea this already exists.

Prof. Adamson mentioned "the coal mines of Cape Breton". If you google on 'Cape Breton coal mines' you get 251,000 hits, with good sites in the top 20. The Heritage Task Force had no idea that these websites already exist.

There's lots of Nova Scotia heritage material available on the Internet, but it’s scattered and much of it is difficult to find.

Without requiring a large expenditure, a recommendation could have been made to set up an online directory that would identify, for anyone interested, what heritage resources are now available. The cost would be minimal (nothing like the "video" website recommended).

One suggestion I believe could be very effective, with a small expenditure, would be for the provincial Heritage Minister to offer an annual prize for the best online presentation of Nova Scotia heritage. Offer recognition, not money. Recognition is a powerful incentive, often more powerful than money.

There are other suggestions that could be implemented without spending gobs of money, but they will be understood only by people with at least some notion of what the Internet is about -- people who have spent some time with a browser looking at a few of the great websites now in existence.

Prof. Adamson wrote: "Hopefully, when the House reassembles for the spring session, this document (the Heritage Task Force report) will be sent to a committee for detailed study." I agree. Let's hope this happens.

Maybe this will offer an opportunity to fill this humongous oversight in the VPC report.

Ivan Smith

Canning