RE: [Arches] How to integrate Built Heritage, Immoveable Collections, and Moveable Collections

[Van Daele, Koen]

Hello Allison,

I would certainly recommend looking further into Collective Access (CA) 
(http://www.collectiveaccess.org/) It’s a project that has been around for 
years, but still seems to be going strong. I’ve met some of the people behind 
the project. Very open and friendly and knowledgeable. What was nice was that 
they also had archivists and historians on staff, so they could approach a 
project from the technical and the business side. The software itself is very 
flexible and can be customised heavily. Which is an advantage and a 
disadvantage at the same time. Depending on who you are, what your technical 
skills are and how much you're willing to invest.

I believe Omeka (http://omeka.org/) is somewhat similar in some aspects, 
although it is supposed to be less flexible and less customisable. But much 
simpeler to get up and running. Finally there's also Collection Space 
(http://www.collectionspace.org/)<http://www.collectionspace.org/>. I assume 
that one is a bit closer to Collective Access, but maybe that's just because of 
the names. I do think Collective Access is the most flexible of them all and 
based on my limited experience it has the bigger user base.
Cheers,
Koen

Van: archesproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:archesproject@googlegroups.com] 
Namens Allison Lee
Verzonden: maandag 14 november 2016 16:34
Aan: Arches Project <archesproject@googlegroups.com>
Onderwerp: Re: [Arches] How to integrate Built Heritage, Immoveable 
Collections, and Moveable Collections

Hello David,

Thank you for the detailed response about bringing these documentation 
objectives together into one place.  We have reviewed a bit of Collective 
Access, and it does seem to be a good option for storing our collection data 
and linking it to the main Arches site.  At the moment, developing new modules 
may be too demanding for our limited resources but we will revisit this when v4 
is released.

If anyone has other suggestions for moveable collections, or any advice 
regarding Collective Access, please do let us know.  We don't have experience 
with Collective Access, but it does appear very capable for extensive component 
collections such as ours.

Best,
Allison
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Re: [Arches] How to integrate Built Heritage, Immoveable Collections, and Moveable Collections

[Allison Lee]

Hello David,

Thank you for the detailed response about bringing these documentation 
objectives together into one place.  We have reviewed a bit of Collective 
Access, and it does seem to be a good option for storing our collection 
data and linking it to the main Arches site.  At the moment, developing new 
modules may be too demanding for our limited resources but we will revisit 
this when v4 is released.

If anyone has other suggestions for moveable collections, or any advice 
regarding Collective Access, please do let us know.  We don't have 
experience with Collective Access, but it does appear very capable for 
extensive component collections such as ours.

Best,
Allison

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RE: [Arches] How to integrate Built Heritage, Immoveable Collections, and Moveable Collections

[David Myers]

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 
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