Digital Heritage Inventory Management Systems
Organizing survey and mapping data as the project progresses will be beneficial to future investigations and nominations. Having this information available online in a digital database will create simplicity in entry and retrieval of information and provides public access to information that would otherwise be inaccessible. Digital tools such as MHT’s existing Medusa system and the Arches Heritage Inventory and Management System can aid in both streamlining the documentation process and other later uses of records. Other tools such as Historypin, a website that intersects storytelling with mapping and visual imagery, can provide the public with a more easily accessible and digestible summary of surveyed historic resources. [1] Providing that the public not only has access to data but can interpret and enjoy it ensures a substantial resource is given back to the communities who shared their information for the statement. Integrating the Arches system with the existing Medusa system could aid in the organization of data and help to analyze relationships between properties. Arches can generate diagrams and tabulations of resource groups, linking them to people, events, activities, or other categories. [2]
|
The Historypin website provides some benefits that the Arches or Medusa systems do not:
• Information is easily accessible and digestible to the public worldwide. • Historypin can be used to create self-guided walking tours. • The pins can be linked to other resources such as recordings of oral history interviews, scans or collections of archival materials, and other websites yielding further information. • Pins can be shared on social media or embedded in other websites. • The public can comment on pins and share their own stories. |
|
1. Karen Yee, Baltimore Chinatown Tour, Historypin, https://www.historypin.org/en/baltimore-chinatown-tour-2/geo/39.290385,-76.612189,11/bounds/39.290385,-76.891264,39.290385,-76.333114/paging/1/pin/1146380.
2. Annabel Lee Enriquez, David Meyers, and Alison Dalgity, “The Arches Heritage Inventory and Management System for the Protection of Cultural Resources,” Forum Journal 32, no. 1, (2018): 32.