As a new(ish) member of the Arches team, I thought I should introduce myself to the Arches community. So, hello, I’m Annabel and I’ll be working on Arches as a Getty Conservation Institute graduate intern until next September.

Like many of you, my experience with Arches began in January when the GCI and WMF announced the project; though even before that, I was very aware of the MEGA Jordan project due to my research focus. I study geospatial heritage inventories as part of my overall interest in the digital documentation and visualization of cultural heritage. To that end, I’m a masters degree candidate in both Heritage Conservation and Geographic Information Science and Technology at the University of Southern California here in Los Angeles.

Given this background, I am thrilled to be able to be a part of the Arches team and find out more about open source development. In fact, I was so excited about this project that the week before my internship began, I traveled on my own to attend the Arches workshop at the CIPA 2013 conference. That was a great trip in that I got to see firsthand the response to Arches from the CIPA community, and learn more about the latest in cultural heritage digital documentation. (And, I got the chance to enjoy lovely Strasbourg!)

Right now, I am in the process of putting together some of the Arches documentation regarding glossaries and graphs. Luckily, I actually enjoy deciphering data standards and ontologies, and working with data organization in general. Speaking of data, I can’t wait to help in the customization of the system for SurveyLA. Being a Los Angeles native, it is a special treat to work with that particular dataset.

I look forward to interacting with you all via the Arches forum and social media channels. You can also follow me on Twitter: @AnnabelLee3D