Dear Allison Welcome to the Arches forum, and good to hear that you’re providing support to the Arches implementation in Nepal.
Let me try to provide an initial response to your questions. Regarding documenting large numbers of features/components of heritage resources, addressing this requirement may be quite plausible with Arches v4 (which will be released within the next few months), specifically through modifying the components part of the graph for Heritage Resources to be more sophisticated, and possibly also through the use of new functions that will be included in v4 to automate parts of the component recording process. However, it’s difficult to say exactly how this would be implemented without further detail on your use case. Regarding documenting collections of moveable objects, we have heard this requirement on a number of occasions from other organizations. Although this requirement is not a current priority of the Arches project, we expect that it is likely that another organization will eventually develop an Arches module and graphs to address this requirement. The new features in v4 will certainly make this easier. There may be two options for you to address your requirement at this time: (1) use a different information system to manage collections of moveable objects, at least in the short term, and link to or integrate with Arches. One such open source system that I’ve heard mentioned, but do not have first hand experience with, is Collective Access (http://www.collectiveaccess.org/). If others on the forum have experience with either Collective Access or other open source systems for managing collections of moveable objects, we would welcome hearing about them. (2) Develop your own module within Arches for managing collections of moveable objects. It should be noted that this would require a significant amount of thought and effort to develop, but will be easier using v4. I could envision the Heritage Resource graph being converted for documenting moveable objects, and the Heritage Resource Group graph being converted for documenting collections of moveable objects. If you wish to move forward with this, then it would be worth first looking into relevant international standards, such as the ObjectID standard, and CIDOC documentation standards (http://network.icom.museum/cidoc/working-groups/documentation-standards/). I would welcome others chiming in to share their experiences, particularly on systems and standards documenting collections of moveable ovjects. Best regards, David Myers From: archesproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:archesproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Allison Lee Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2016 9:47 PM To: Arches Project <archesproject@googlegroups.com> Subject: [Arches] How to integrate Built Heritage, Immoveable Collections, and Moveable Collections Hello everyone, Thanks for checking this post and providing feedback to my inquiry. Any suggestions would be welcomed! Here is our puzzle: Here in Nepal, we have been tasked with implementing a comprehensive heritage database. Due to the logistical nature of the region, it would be very beneficial for the heritage information and records to be accessible from one place. Therefore, we are facing 3 main objectives with this comprehensive database: 1. Documenting Architectural Heritage, including monuments, caves, stupas, and other built resources. These resources should be tagged geographically, and supported with information resources such as photos, maps, assessments, etc. 2. Documenting the extensive Features/Components of a built resource. This includes murals, sculptures/images, decorative features, and many carved wooden struts, and can be considered as Collections of Immoveable Objects. 3. Documenting Collections of Moveable Objects, including those of museums and private ownership Arches is ideal for objective #1. But #2 and #3 pose problems. While Arches does record components, from my understanding, it is not meant for large amount of components (or "immoveable collections"). For example, if we have a temple with 100 carved wooden struts, all which have been documented/photographed and numbered (because they must exist in sequential order), this collection of components may exceed the "components" section of a resource's report. Similarly with objective #3, the amount of moveable objects in a museum could also overwhelm or clutter a resource's report. Therefore, we have toyed with the possibility of storing the Immoveable/Moveable Collections items separately (in a different inventory), and listing them as External References for respective resources. Thus our main Arches site would have linked branches to other inventories. My question is: Would this branching scheme help us to accomplish our 3 goals without becoming too cumbersome? And if so, does anyone have recommendations for a straightforward museum collection inventory software? Or does anyone have any other recommendations for how to integrate these 3 objectives into one inventory? Let me also note that Nepal's conditions are not always stable. Therefore, the most user-friendly and straightforward systems would be ideal. Anything too complicated is likely to result in the database not being used. THANK YOU in advance for any feedback! It is greatly appreciated, Allison -- -- To post, send email to archesproject@googlegroups.com<mailto:archesproject@googlegroups.com>. To unsubscribe, send email to archesproject+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<mailto:archesproject+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. For more information, visit https://groups.google.com/d/forum/archesproject?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Arches Project" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to archesproject+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<mailto:archesproject+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- -- To post, send email to archesproject@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe, send email to archesproject+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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