Page 4 - The Building Conservation Directory 2013

4 t h e b u i l d i n g c o n s e r vat i o n d i r e c t o r y 2 0 1 3 T w e n t i e t h a N N i v e r s a r y e d i t i o n
by providing descriptions of their products
and services online, and the site is still the
only comprehensive resource of its kind. Core
information from the printed volumes from
the past 20 years has also been compiled on
the site and presented free to the world of
conservation in the UK and beyond. With
over 400 technical articles it is an unrivalled
resource for our industry (see Readers’ Top
Ten Articles, 1993–2013 on page 201). All
the relevant conservation organisations,
courses and lots of other information are
also provided there so if you haven’t already
been on the site you really should give it a run
through and start using it regularly in your
work alongside this printed version.
Another recent innovation is that we
now publish The Building Conservation
Directory as a digital flipping-page book,
again free on the internet. The flipping-page
“It all started in 1992 with a good idea to
help fill the information gap in the emerging
building conservation and restoration
industry. Jonathan Taylor, Elizabeth
Coyle-Camp and I thought that if we could
compile a comprehensive source of specialist
products and services and other need-to-
know information and put it in the hands of
the people on the front lines, that would go
a long way to helping the cause of preserving
our national heritage. For The Building
Conservation Directory to be commercially
sustainable and so successful has been a
welcome bonus.”
Wow, 20 years! My last written submission to
this Directory was a decade ago marking its
first significant anniversary. Well, we’re still
here and there is obviously still a need for the
information we provide since the Directory
and its website Buildingconservation.com
continue to flourish.
We’ve always promoted The Building
Conservation Directory as ‘the first step
in the specification process’ for work with
historic buildings and their surroundings
but it has become much more than this.
The Directory’s usefulness to owners and
specifiers is well established, helping them
find the right products and services for
old buildings, and it has proven its worth
year after year to our specialist advertisers
in promoting their organisations and
businesses.
Innovations
The modern methods of communication
and production we now use are more high-
tech and ‘efficient’ than when we started
but, when you strip these and a few other
business innovations back, our core approach
of providing useful and high quality
The Building
Conservation
Directory’s
20th anniversary
Gordon Sorensen
information to help our industry hasn’t
changed a bit.
At Cathedral in the next 20 years we will
continue to embrace new technologies and
methods of communicating our messages,
together with those of our authors and
advertisers. And we will do what we can to
promote the interests of our industry and
the dedicated individuals, companies and
organisations who represent the front line in
the protection and managed evolution of our
historic built environment.
Of course one of the greatest innovations
for the conservation industry has been
the internet. The Building Conservation
Directory was one of the first online
resources in our field following the launch
in 1999 of Buildingconservation.com. The
site immediately gave worldwide access to all
Building Conservation Directory participants
Other publications from Cathedral Communications