Commentary Part 1 – Historic Environment Scotland Section 14 – Interpretation of Part 1
77.Section 14 sets out how the terms “collection”, “object” and “property in care” are to be interpreted in Part 1 of the Act.
78.“Collection” in Part 1 means a collection of objects usually with some kind of shared characteristic, for example created by the same individual or referring to the same place. It is used in this Part to refer specifically to collections of objects, rather than to collections of buildings or sites. The term can refer to the entire collection of material managed by Historic Environment Scotland or smaller groupings within the ‘parent collection’.
79.The collections that will be managed by Historic Environment Scotland include material of many different types and in many different formats. The term “object” has been used throughout the Act to refer to a ‘thing’ curated by Historic Environment Scotland. The definition provided in the Act makes it clear that objects may be physical artefacts, documents or indeed anything, provided only that it is of relevance to the historic environment.
80.“Object” in the Act means an object, document or other thing having historical, archaeological, architectural or cultural significance or interest relating to the historic environment generally or with particular reference to Scotland. The term “document” used here takes its meaning from schedule 1 to the Interpretation and Legislative Reform Scotland Act 2010 and means “anything in which information is recorded in any form (and references to producing a document are to be read accordingly)”. “Document” would cover information recorded in electronic form, for example, digital images, databases, spread sheets and 3-D and 2-D spatial data.
81.“Property in care” has the meaning given to it in section 4.