Historic England celebrates a decade of partnership working with the Getty Conservation Institute

A long-standing partnership

With the recent release of the new open-source software tool Arches Lingo, Historic England and the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) are marking well over a decade of working together as partners.

Since 2013, Historic England and the GCI have worked to develop and advance Arches, a free, open-source software platform for use by organisations around the world to manage data and help protect cultural heritage. So far Arches has been used by more than 130 organisations and projects around the world to document and help protect cultural heritage places and objects in a variety of ways.

The GCI has served as sponsor of the Arches Project since its inception, providing for the platform's ongoing development. Historic England has contributed longstanding expertise and advice on heritage data standards and inventory practices and has been instrumental in the design of Arches. Historic England has also deployed Arches to support its own heritage protection mandate, including managing England's National Record of the Historic Environment, England's National Marine Heritage Record, and the Greater London Historic Environment Record.

Arches Lingo: a new tool for the cultural heritage sector

Arches Lingo is a software application purpose-built for cultural heritage organisations and their vocabulary editors and data managers. It provides a single environment for loading, browsing, editing, and publishing controlled vocabularies such as thesauri, with support for the standards and workflows that heritage professionals rely on.

Consistent vocabularies are essential for institutions seeking to record cultural heritage places and objects accurately and enable effective searches across information systems. They also help position heritage information for future exploration through emerging digital and AI-assisted technologies.

Until now, heritage organisations have typically relied on proprietary software tools for vocabulary management, with licencing costs rising steadily over time.

Lingo offers a free, open-source alternative with no licencing fees, developed by and for the cultural heritage field.

Lingo was created by the GCI, with knowledge organisation expertise provided by Historic England. Historic England will use the tool to manage and publish the thesauri of the UK Forum on Information Standards in Heritage (FISH), which are used by the heritage sector across the United Kingdom.

A look to the future

Leadership of Historic England and the Getty Conservation Institute recently met in London to celebrate the achievements of this partnership, and to confirm the next phase of their joint Arches-related work. This will include:

• Disseminating Lingo within the cultural heritage sector
• Providing information and guidance to UK heritage organisations with respect to implementing the Arches for HERs application that is purpose-built for UK historic environment records
• Continuing to work actively together within the Arches Project governance committees to determine future priorities for Arches that support heritage protection internationally