 A dyfoddod y wneud o'r adweudiaethau ar gwyllwch ein meddownu'r g kissing Shoulder opening of the Cro-upbeat is a bit different in that it doesn't focus on a specific example of heritage science in action and nor am I a heritage scientist by profession. Instead I'm going to talk to you about heritage science in the context of the national heritage science strategy giving examples of how heritage science can deliver impact a'r project yng Nghymru ar y Ffadigwyr Ffadigwyr Fadigwyr Fadigwyr, i'r ffadigwyr Fadigwyr Fadigwyr, i'r dyma'r gafodau o'r ffadigwyr fadigwyr. Fadigwyr Fadigwyr Fadigwyr yw'r ffadigwyr ac yr ffadigwyr fadigwyr yn gweithio'r rhaid. Mae'r cyfrwyng yma'r cynhyrch yn bwysigu ffadigwyr mynd i'r fadigwyr. cofnwys yw'r oeddgyn buddordeb yn cael ei gweithio ar gyffredinol, yn gorffodol, ond ddart yr oedd yn cael eu bwysig o holl gweithgiadol a chylo'r drefleol, ac o'r gwir yna ddoi'r gwirioneddau nesaf i ymddechrau naddwaterfynol a'r g подход. Mae'r gwirionedd ar y gweithgiadol wedi'u'n gweithio ar y inghyd, oedd y gallwch yn y rhan o erbyn gyfaint ac y tuol ynando i'r gwirioneddau. Felly, ychydig o'r gwirioneddau ar gyfer, fel y gŷl y gŷl ar gyfer hwnnw y ffredd yng nghylch yn fwyaf i gŷl mewn gwthio'r unigol. Rwy'n edrych ar gyfer hwnnw i'r ffordd ar y gŷl, a'r hynny'n ddyn nhw'n gwybod i'ch gŷl ar gyfer hwnnw, so that we can understand our heritage better, and so that we can involve more people in the process of discovering new things about heritage. In the UK, the National Heritage Science Strategy provides a framework for understanding where heritage science research is needed. It was developed in response to a House of Lords Select Committee inquiry into science and heritage, which found that the community carrying out research and the way that research was carried out was fragmented, that it was undervalued, not taken into account by government, and that there was insufficient new knowledge transfer between where research was carried out and the users of research. So heritage science is fundamentally interdisciplinary. It brings together arts and humanities research with that in chemistry, engineering and the physical sciences, as I think has been shown by both of the projects that Paul and Cecilia were talking about. And it increasingly engages with industry, it's carried out by heritage organisations in universities, and it's used by all sorts of different people. The strategy has been a useful development and it continues to act as a focal point for all of these different producers and users of research. In itself, it was a mechanism for drawing people together as the people from different organisations joined forces and worked together on it. The strategy is underpinned by three evidence reports which looked at the role of science in the management of the UK's heritage, the use of science to enhance our understanding of the past, and a third document on capacity in the heritage science sector, which was about capability, accessing information, infrastructure, funding and public benefit. So the National Heritage Science Strategy drew together findings from these three background reports, if you like, and the strategy itself was published in 2010. Its strategic aims are given on this slide, and I've included these here because I think they capture the areas of potential impact of heritage science research. So public benefit, public engagement, and a strong emphasis on partnership, and that might be in terms of collaboration with results research, knowledge or innovation, but also partnerships that can help to enhance the use of resources, funding and skills. Now, I think it's fair to say that if you're to delve into the evidence reports themselves that they're rather wordy. This slide shows a few of the topics that have been identified for research in one of those underpinning evidence reports. I chose these at random, but you will see that they tend to be quite specific and detailed in what they describe. And on the surface, I think this makes it quite difficult to link them back to those strategic aims that relate to public engagement, partnership and to a monster or wider impact. But the projects that address these topics, or others that are similarly wordy, can and do deliver impact. And over the next few slides, I'm going to highlight a few projects as examples of how heritage science can have an impact on our use and understanding of collections. Perhaps the easiest thing to demonstrate is that first area that I identified on the impact on the way that we look after collections. This research project, Collections Demography, was led by the UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage with project partners at the University of East Anglia, UCL Department of Statistics, the National Archives, English Heritage as was, the Library of Congress and the Dutch National Archives. And its goal was to understand how collections grow and degrade depending on use, environment and material properties. And that was all informed by an overarching framework of cultural values. It used this understanding to develop a model which can be used as a management tool for looking after collections. And the research project engaged with just under 550 volunteers in its first phase to explore how visitors value archival and library objects and what their attitudes to degradation are and when in the future they would accept that objects are no longer available to read or display in a satisfactory state. In a second phase, a further 330 volunteers were involved in research which explored the thresholds for fitness of display in the context of reading rooms and exhibitions and what influenced readers' perceptions of when material was judged to be unfit and that might be things like discoloration of documents or missing pieces. The research has helped those with collection management responsibilities to better understand what they've done in the lifetime of collections and has meant that collections can be managed and stored more economically and with greater environmental sustainability, so that's one area of impact. But it's also provided information about visitor and reader tolerance for acceptable damage as well as engaging large numbers of people in the research itself. It's brought together organisations to work collaboratively and share their skills and knowledge. So a different example shows how heritage science can have an impact on interpretation and understanding. You may have read about earlier this year the research that the National Archives carried out into Shakespeare's will. Working with imaging science colleagues at the British Library, the researcher Amanda Bevan, head of legal archives at TNA, developed a new interpretation of Shakespeare's will as a result of imaging techniques showing that there was a difference in the inks used across three pages which had previously been thought to have been written at the same time. The heritage science research, so in this case the imaging, has had an impact in terms of new understanding and interpretation and if you've not seen it Amanda has written a great blog about her process of discovery from which this text isn't extract. Again this project demonstrates the collaboration and partnership themes important to heritage science with the British Library and National Archives sharing their equipment and specialist knowledge to generate new outcomes for research. In terms of wider impact, the story of the reinterpretation of the will gained good press coverage and the will itself was a key part of an exhibition at King's College and part of the Shakespeare 400 celebrations. So my next example is about involving more people in heritage science research and making the equipment for heritage science research accessible. These are pictures of the Cihar mobile heritage lab and that's the science and engineering and arts heritage and archaeology programme at UCL. It's a research and public engagement resource and as part of the Cihar collaborative doctoral training initiative it aids the delivery of projects related to the research of the students on that programme. Its purpose is to make heritage science widely available and that might be by bringing the lab to an institution that wants to apply to use it for research or public engagement or through its own public engagement activities that it gets involved in. I've got a link there. There's an application form online and three rolling deadlines for applications throughout the year, the next one's January 30th. If you're interested in applying to have the mobile heritage science lab come and visit your institution and help you with your research. An example of one of its recent public engagement activities was a visit to Cheltenham Science Festival in June of this year and they've got some great pictures actually on their website about that that I didn't manage to capture for this slide. But in terms of again impact I would suggest an exercise such as this is an unparalleled public engagement experience for those students who are lucky enough to be part of the Cihar programme and the activities were apparently very well received by people attending the festival that I'm afraid I haven't got numbers from Cihar colleagues. But I thought it was interesting that it also brings heritage science to new audiences and I quote from Cihar, many visitors were surprised, even pleased that such an application of science existed. So we're breaking new ground on that front. And then finally I thought my last slide in this section would sort of highlight the potential impact that projects such as these can have on the profile of an organisation. This being an example of how research into a Mesoamerican manuscript at the Bodleian, again using imaging techniques, was picked up by the press. That's my favourite one, Bodleian boffins uncover images. But seriously this is good for profile, it's good for research visibility, it's good for the visibility of the organisation and of course it has the potential to attract further funding and resources for research if nothing else. So moving on to current and future opportunities. In 2015 the National Heritage Science Forum began the project Filling the Gaps to find out what's happened in terms of science and heritage research over the five years since the publication of the heritage science strategy. We commissioned a small piece of research that went through the gateway to research database which publishes research council funded research to identify projects from 2010 onwards and to map those projects to the topics that had been identified in the evidence reports for this heritage science strategy. And it was a fairly complicated exercise I have to say. The research focused on mapping just one of the evidence reports, the role of science in the management of the UK's heritage, which itself has four themes and multiple sort of subtopics. I think we identified 64 topics to map against and after interrogating the research gateway database established that there were about 20 projects at map to 18 of the topics. And this is what you see captured in this slide that it looks like there's been fair progress made on research addressing needs related to creating appropriate environments for materials and understanding the behaviour of modern materials. But there's still a fair chunk of research needed into adapting to climate change and understanding the materials behaviour. And I should say that the strategy is of course much wider than library and archive material that covers built historic environment and archaeology as well. So not all of these topics are relevant to each context if you like. So filling the gaps project is so far only looked at the gaps in heritage science knowledge and practice. And this extract is taken from the evidence report that relates to how science is used, which is perhaps more valuable in the context of a conference on impact. But I've included it to encourage you to think about the opportunities for using science and technology in the explorations of your collections. The research report picked out that apparently application to library and archive material is particularly limited. And I think things like the development of imaging techniques have already been referenced this morning offer particularly exciting opportunities for investigation and future research. So as examples of opportunities that remain, the topics that are perhaps specifically relevant to libraries and archives are research into low oxygen and anoxic conditions for storage and display. Although Paul might be able to help shed some light on that for me afterwards with his research into options for Magna Carta. Also things around the standardisation of methods for condition assessments, storage conditions for architectural drawing film and the conservation and long term management of acetate and heat set document laminates. So if you have collections that include these types of materials or projects that would benefit from research that would achieve those goals then perhaps teaming up with an academic partner might be a way of addressing it. So these are the areas that were identified by the team that drew up the strategies priority areas and the research into them therefore I think one can assume has the potential to help very many organisations who are grappling with these common issues. But I mentioned at the outset that I think there are opportunities not only to apply science to the understanding material behaviour or environments but also importantly practice new ways of doing things. And personally and as I said I'm not a scientist I think this is where some of the more exciting and potentially engaging opportunities lie. So looking at methods, ways of doing things, new techniques and tools. This just highlights a few of those areas where I think current opportunities lie for research. The main slide is just a snap from the Arts and Humanities Research Council website highlighting a project that's creating people's photos to help preserve what heritage sites look like, a sort of crowdsourcing exercise. Then there are the collaborative doctoral training schemes of which Seahawr is an example. Many of you might already be experienced in taking part in those initiatives. But I wonder whether you've done it from a sort of science and technology collaboration, that might be something to think about. Big data, I love the term, I'm always a bit foggy about what it covers but it's a big opportunity and of course digital humanities research offers new ways of exploring and exploiting how we can use data so that's a real growth area who has access to it. Heritage science or heritage research has been identified by AHRC as one of its three priority areas moving forward and they've just employed a heritage leadership fellow to take up his role in January. So this will be a key area for them in developing a future further strategy and the types of things that they're looking at under this theme are around connecting people with heritage, around sustainability of cultural heritage, values and cultural heritage. So that might be an opportunity as well. Then of course there are slightly more foggy issues such as the impact of the restructuring of the research councils and what the effect of that will be. Opportunities such as the Cultural Protection Fund and linked to that perhaps the export of skills and knowledge particularly in this area of heritage science and support for heritage overseas. And the B word as was mentioned earlier Brexit which I think many people will fear has a profound impact on the funding available for research such as this. But we're also being encouraged to think creatively about what opportunities it might present for new ways of doing things. So you get to the filling the gaps bit that I've been involved in recently. One of the things that I was very conscious of when we got back the results from the initial research was that of course relatively little heritage science research is I think funded by research councils and perhaps takes the form of these large projects. So we wanted to carry out an exercise that was broader and to ask anyone with the knowledge of research carried out in the topics that form part of the National Heritage Science Strategy to share them with us and add them through a survey mechanism. So the research if you know stuff it can be published or unpublished and the only criteria really is that it's been carried out since 2010 which was when the strategy itself was launched. And I've got a number of these surveys out at the moment because I've broken down that immense list of 64 topics into sort of 10 themes. Six are out at the moment and we're encouraging people to add information about it can be as simple as a project title or it can be much more comprehensive about exactly sort of who the lead author was, which organisation carried it out, how much funding was involved. And what we'd like to do with the information that we gather together is share it so that we can help make a heritage science more visible, increase the impact of the research that has been carried out by making people aware of it. And also highlight where those real gaps are because I'm deeply conscious that we haven't really got to the bottom of that yet and what the opportunities there for our future research and for funding. We'll talk to funders and promote those areas as topics that still need to be addressed. So if any of this has whetted your appetite for heritage science you might find our blog of interest and the blog is the mechanism that we're using to put out the survey as well. At the moment it is rather dominated by the Filling the Gaps project but you'll also find contributions from heritage scientists describing their very varied work if you scroll back among the items. And we've got everything really there from listening to furniture to the use of nanotechnology by Tate and exercising crowdsourcing orchid observations by the Natural History Museum. So there's a great range of examples of what heritage science can encompass on that. This slide just shows who the current members of the National Heritage Science Forum are to give you a flavour of that disciplinarity and collaboration which is at the heart of everything that happens. And these are further opportunities to get involved and find out more about both filling the gaps and heritage science in general. So thank you very much.