Arches for HERs

Welcome to all who are interested in Arches for HERs, a comprehensive data management platform for UK Historic Environment Records (HERs). Arches for HERs is purpose-built for HERs and any organisation that conforms to the standards specified by the Forum for Information Standards in Heritage (FISH), including MIDAS Heritage. Given the comprehensive functionality of Arches for HERs suited to common requirements of heritage institutions, organisations outside the UK have also found Arches for HERs useful to customise to meet their particular needs.

Why Arches for HERs?

Arches for HERs has been created to provide UK historic environment record (HER) offices an economical and sophisticated, web-based software platform that:

• Is customized to meet the most common requirements of the UK historic environment sector, and as open-source software can be readily customized further as needed
• Minimizes the need for HERs to repeat the process of data modeling and software customization, as Arches for HERs includes specifications and processes shared by many HERs
• Provides benefits of open-source software, including no licensing fees, no restrictions on numbers of users, and licensing requiring that Arches software enhancements be shared with its community
• Takes advantage of a robust and growing international Arches open-source community

Arches for HERs was developed by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in partnership with Historic England and the City of Lincoln, through initial use by the Greater London Historic Environment Record (GLHER) and the Lincoln HER. The GCI is the sponsor of the Arches Project, founded in 2012. Historic England has actively contributed to the Arches Project since its inception.

What is Arches for HERs?

Arches for HERs is a version of the open source and freely available Arches Platform that is customised for HERs. For more about Arches, see below.

Arches for HERs is purpose-built for UK Historic Environment Records (HERs).

Arches for HERs was developed with UK cultural heritage data in mind.

• • It incorporates standards as specified by the Forum for Information Standards in Heritage (FISH):
    • MIDAS Heritage – the British cultural heritage standard for recording information on buildings, monuments, archaeological sites, shipwrecks and submerged landscapes, parks and gardens, battlefields, artefacts and ecofacts.
    • FISH vocabularies – Supported by the FISH Terminology Working Group, these thesauri consist of terminology to describe heritage in the UK.
  • The geospatial features use the British National Grid coordinate system.

Arches for HERs is for UK cultural heritage organisations and professionals.

• • As open-source software, Arches for HERs has no licensing fees and can be used by an unlimited number of users with no licensing restrictions.
  • Once implemented, the software is easy to use and does not require extensive training.
  • Arches for HERs enables better and efficient decision making through advanced data discovery and visualisation tools.
  • The Arches for HERs Consultations module streamlines the casework and consultation process and integrates fully with the inventory data managed by Arches.

Arches for HERs is powerful and dynamic web-based software.

Arches for HERs includes many advanced features including:

• • Geospatial visualisation and search, including the ability to include satellite, aerial, and historic and current map imagery.
  • Thesauri management via the Arches Reference Data Manager (RDM).
  • Integrated temporal searching and management of fuzzy (less than complete or partial) dates.
  • Documentation and visualisation of relationships between resources (e.g., between cultural places or objects, people or organisations, events, archives, and documents)

Arches is developed with open-source tools and for non-proprietary data formats.

• • The Arches software stack includes modern open-source software components, such as PostgreSQL and ElasticSearch, that are widely-used and regularly maintained.
  • Arches uses non-proprietary standard data formats to ensure that data is not tied to any particular software or technology.

Arches for HERs can be integrated with other systems

• • Arches Esri Link connects Arches for HERs to ArcGIS Pro, which will allow Esri users to directly access and edit Arches data from their Esri desktop GIS software and vice versa.

Arches for HERs is part of the Arches ecosystem.

Arches has a robust global community of implementers, users, and supporters.

• • In order to ensure regular maintenance and active updates of the software platform, the Arches project has fostered a broad and growing community or organisations and individuals around the world who are invested in the software’s longevity and success.
  • The UK Users’ Group is a community-led effort consisting of participants from organisations and projects who are currently using Arches and who are otherwise interested in Arches.

Who is using Arches for HERs?

After more than a year of internal use, Historic England launched public access to the Greater London Historic Environment Record (GLHER) Online, an instance of Arches for HERs, in September 2024. For more information, watch the Arches Project webinar about GLHER Online and its use that was recorded in September 2023.

The City of Lincoln also deployed Arches for the Lincoln Historic Environment Record (HER), branded as ARCADE, as part of a pilot project to develop Arches for HERs. ARCADE will be migrated to Arches for HERs.

The following UK Crown Dependencies also already implemented earlier versions of the Arches software:

• Jersey Historic Environment Record
• Isle of Man Historic Environment Record

How long has Arches for HERs been available and how much does it cost?

Arches for HERs was fully released in September 2024.

As open-source software, Arches for HERs has no licensing fees and once implemented can be used by an unlimited number of users with no licensing restrictions. If using the ArcGIS integration, ArcGIS Pro licenses will, of course, be required. While Arches has no licensing fees, for more information on costs and requirements for its implementation, please see Implementation Considerations for Arches.

Resources Available to Arches for HERs Evaluators and Implementers

For those interested in evaluating Arches for HERs, a demonstration instance of Arches for HERs including a subset of data from the GLHER instance of this Arches application is available online.

Also explore user documentation for Arches for HERs created by Historic England.

The Arches community additionally includes technical service providers with experience in deploying Arches. Find out more on the Arches Service Providers webpage.

The Arches Project has created a range of resources for members of its open-source community, as well as ways to participate in that community. The “Participate in the Community” webpage provides links to a variety of ways to participate as well as related resources. The “Participating in the Arches Open-Source Community” webinar provides additional related information. A primary resource for posting Arches-related questions as well as receiving Arches-related announcements is the Arches Community Forum, which welcomes anyone to join. See an introductory post on the Arches forum providing guidance to those interested in Arches for HERs.

About the core Arches Platform

Arches is a fully-featured data management and publishing platform, initially developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund for cultural heritage inventories, that now enables data longevity and interoperability for a wide array of domains and uses. For more information about Arches, visit the Getting Started with Arches page.

Header Image: Whitby Abbey Evening Light. Photo by Neal Rylatt.

Last updated: November 2024