There’s an app for everything right? Well it certainly seems that way, and like many other things in our increasingly busy lives, archaeology has apps too. So what I thought I would do is to ‘road-test’, as it were, some of the apps. A number of organisations like the National Trust and English Heritage have their own ‘apps’, and I’m going to use the English Heritage app to look at some of the things it can do and tell me about heritage and archaeology around where we live. That shouldn’t be too difficult as there is an awful lot of archaeology around us here in the Peak District!
Now Ian, my husband and co-worker here at Enrichment, did some visitor surveys at Arbor Low, which is a Neolithic monument not far from us. What he found was that while around 95% of visitors had a ‘smartphone’ only around 5% used them when visiting archaeological sites, museums etc. Of course, he’d be the first to admit that a relatively small sample doesn’t prove much but it did get me to thinking. We see a lot about the digital world and how we as members of the public can access our past, but how useful and accessible is it? To answer that I’ve downloaded the EH app and am setting off on a series of outings to see what the answer is.
So, over the next few weeks I will be posting some blogs about my experiences with the app to let you know how it works out!
If you want to have a go as well go to the English Heritage website: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/app/