Storing related project / contract information

[Ali]

Hi all,

Our organization has been watching the development of Arches and we are very excited to try it out. To start, we are limiting the resources to a couple of sites that are managed by us directly. Our hope is that apart from building an inventory of our sites and the related information, we can extend Arches to manage project and contract data for each of these sites in one single system. However, we are not sure if that is at all technically feasible and how easy it would be to extend Arches through modules/plugins. That is why I am wondering if others have thought about this issue and if there are future plans to possibly integrate existing open-source project management systems with Arches.

Best regards,
Ali

[Edmund Lee]

Hi again Ali,

That's an interesting extension to Arches. Perhaps you could say a bit more about the type of contract and project work you have in mind? Are you looking to Arches to provide active project management support (e.g. tracking tasks and schedules for time and cost) or as a more passive repository of associated documentation? Or both?

Best wishes

Ed

[Ali Nayeri]

Hi Ed,

 

Many thanks for responding to my post.

 

I wanted to respond sooner but thought I should take some time to understand Arches and CIDOC CRM first. My assumption is that any additional data that we will want to store in the database must conform to some ontology (existing or developed specifically for this project). I must say for someone who has never thought about how knowledge is organized, the video tutorial on the CIDOC CRM is both very interesting and scary at the same time! And I must confess, I still do not quite understand how the CIDOC CRM is implemented in Arches, specifically how the mappings and desk instructions are encapsulated right into the database. But a self-describing data-set makes perfect sense.

 

With respect to your question, our thought was that linking heritage resource data directly to the conservation projects that are related to those resources would be a logical extension of a heritage resources management system. We find that past project data is very useful for developing future projects (e.g. for determining the appropriate conservation approach, the budget, etc.). We currently use complicated directory structures to track projects, contracts, reports, photographs, etc. for each site. Each person uses their own method of organizing the data and we have many copies of reports and pictures spread across our file server. This makes finding information very difficult and cataloguing and migration to new systems almost impossible.

 

We had started an in-house project to develop a system to manage our projects. In it we wanted to track project and contract data, including schedule and budget for current projects, but also import our past projects so that they can be indexed for searching. However, we thought that instead of starting from zero, it might make sense to build this system on top of Arches. I think the Activity, Actor and Information Resource elements/resources can already capture some information related to conservation projects.

 

Sorry for the long message. I hope it provides a bit more background.

 

Best regards,

Ali

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[Adam Cox]

Hi Ali, this is certainly possible in some form, and it sounds similar to something that I'll be working to create for the Armed Forces Retirement Home, the current project I'm working on.  We plan to add a sort of "Management Activity" resource type, based on their current database of management records.  Those in turn will be related to any resources that are affected by a given activity.  This concept is in the works for us, but I will let you know when the new resource types have been fully set up.

If you have a specific "report" format or activity log, a new resource graph could be built to faithfully represent all of the information you usually collect, and all of your existing data could be loaded in to populate the database.

Adam

[Edmund Lee]

Hi Ali,

In case it helps your thinking, the MIDAS Heritage data standard developed for United Kingdom datasets covered Heritage Asset Management Activities. It's available to download at http://www.historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/midas-heritage/ .You'll find the relevant bit on (pages 45-47), but you might need to skim through the Introduction to see how this fits in.

MIDAS defines these activities very broadly as

"Activities undertaken to prevent damage to, or promote the survival of, Heritage Assets."

I hope that proves useful - I know that MIDAS was one of the influences on Arches ontology development.

CIDOC-CRM = 'interesting + scary'. I agree!

Ed

[David Myers]

Hi Ali

 

Great to have you join the forum, and to hear about your interest in the potential use of Arches by Alberta Culture! I thought I would add to what Adam and Ed have said in response to your query about being able to record and manage information on conservation projects, and associated documents, relating to heritage resources. As you’ve probably gathered, the default Arches resource type that is intended to be used to record any type of management activity (writ large as MIDAS defines them, including conservation projects) is the Activity resource. And Ed is correct that MIDAS was an influence in conceiving this Arches resource type. The nodes (which you can think if as fields) in the Activity resource graph have been geared toward the common information requirements of most heritage organizations. It has always been our assumption that different organizations deploying Arches, whose requirements vary widely, could then build upon those nodes to meet their particular needs.

 

And as I think you’ve gathered, the Arches Information Resource graph is intended to record documents, images, and other types of information carriers (such as the contracts, reports, photos, etc.), and can include digital files. We’ve referred to the Dublin Core metadata standard to  design that graph, and it may also be extended to meet an organization’s particular needs.

 

Arches then allows for the creation of relationships between records of any of the 6 default Arches resource types, including the two I’ve mentioned above as well as Heritage Resources, Heritage Resource Groups, Actors, and Historical Events.

 

The following is an example of a report of an Activity resource in the HistoricPlacesLA implementation of Arches

http://historicplacesla.org/reports/92d450c1-14e7-436e-b5d9-e44b62c75f97

 

It is the record for a field survey activity. You will see that the record has data included for only certain fields: activity name; related resources, including related Heritage Resources (which are linked to the records of each resource recorded through the survey); related Information Resources (you will see a link to the survey report; you could relate as many documents to this activity as you wish). The report will give you an idea of the other types of information that can be recorded for Activity Resources in the default Arches graph, without modification.

 

Best regards,

David

 

From: arches...@googlegroups.com [mailto:arches...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Edmund Lee
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 5:57 AM
To: Arches Project <arches...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [Arches] Re: Storing related project / contract information

 

Hi Ali,

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