OVERVIEW H i g h l y c o n f i g u r a b l e s o f t w a r e a c c o m m o d a t e s a w i d e r a n g e o f c o l l e c t i o n s T h r e e s o l u t i o n s c o v e r P o r t a l s, C o l l e c t i o n s M a n a g e m e n t a n d A p p s f o r m o b i l e d e v i c e s P o w e r f u l L e x i c o n p r o v i d e s o n l i n e t h e s a u r a l c o n t r o l ARGUS.net IS THREE SOLUTIONS IN ONE Software Suite offers new Portal, Collections Management and App options for today s museums ARGUS.net O VE R VIEW ARGUS.net is a powerful Web-based collections management, portal and mobile app solution designed to meet the needs of today s museums as well as museums of the future. It helps museums: Increase museum traffic using audience-specific portals and interactive exhibits that are accessible over the Internet Inspire their visitors with multimedia presentations and access to collections using mobile apps on smart phones and tablets Ignite new opportunities ranging from E-commerce to Membership metrics CONTENTS A R G U S. n e t O v e r v i e w C o l l e c t i o n s m a n a g e m e n t I n f o r m a t i o n M a n a g e r P o r t a l A p p B u i l d e r f o r m o b i l e d e v i c e s S t a t e - Of- T h e - A r t T e c h n o l o g y O p t i o n F o r 2 4 / 7 H o s t i n g S e r v i c e D a t a D r i v e n S t r a t e g y I n t e g r a t e d W e b S t r a t e g y Based on Questor s robust ARGUS collections management solution, ARGUS.net is one system that features seamless integration between three key areas. It includes not only the features that today s museums require for managing valuable museum collections but also includes both a built-in Portal a web site in a box that lets you deliver information about the collection activities over the Web easily and efficiently as well as a built-in App Builder that lets you quickly deploy exhibit applications for mobile devices such as the ipad and iphone. ARGUS.net is highly configurable software, designed to accommodate a diverse range of collections including archaeology, ethnology, fine and folk art, history, natural science and slide collections. It has built-in features that allow museum professionals to re-configure ARGUS.net as the museum s needs change and as new requirements appear. A R G U S. n e t o f f e r s t h r e e s o l u t i o n s i n o n e : P o r t a l s, C o l l e c t i o n s M a n a g e m e n t a n d E x h i b i t A p p s f o r M o b i l e d e v i c e s
COLLECTION S MANAGEMENT Both museum professionals and museum visitors will find that searching the ARGUS.net collection catalog is easy, powerful and efficient. ARGUS.net s web catalog includes sophisticated search features that provide for precise retrieval. Since the catalog is updated dynamically, users can always find the most current information about the objects that interest them. In addition museums can choose between integrating the built-in web catalog into their existing Web site, or using the web catalog within ARGUS.net s built-in portal the one system approach to delivering information about objects within the complete context of the museum s activities. ARGUS.net includes a powerful hierarchical Lexicon that provides thesaural control during the data entry process. Since it can be used with a wide range of fields, the Lexicon is a powerful means of controlling the terms used in describing the museum s collection. The Lexicon not only includes support for industry-standard vocabularies but it also allows the museum to create its own hierarchical thesaurus, including terms that represent its collections and constituency. Users can enter and organize new terms as needed, referencing synonyms, alternate terms, and homonyms. In addition to a traditional thesaurus, the Lexicon enables museums to catalog any term adding detail related to the context. As an example, artists records can include artist names and pseudonyms, birth and death dates, nationality, gender and other descriptive information about the artist. An unlimited number of digitized materials of all types can be managed by ARGUS.net. Images, animation, audio and video clips, PDFs, and other types of digital files can be associated with collection records and are visible within the web catalog and its Image Gallery display. Museums can either supply their own thumbnails or let ARGUS.net create them. Digital files can also be used to document standard museum processes such as conservation. In addition, ARGUS.net maintains descriptive information about the content of the digital files (e.g., resolution, dimensions in pixels, compression), as well as the management information (e.g., photographer, date photographed, rights and permissions) that museums require as part of their photographic services and documentation efforts. A n u n l i m i t e d n u m b e r o f d i g i t i z e d m a t e r i a l s o f a l l t y p e s c a n b e m a n a g e d b y A R G U S. n e t. A R G U S. n e t i n c l u d e s a p o w e r f u l h i e r a r c h i c a l L e x i c o n
ARGUS.net s IN FORMATION MAN AG E R PORT AL The ARGUS.net Information Management Portal is a web interface to your collection. It acts as a web site in a box to make relevant information immediately accessible to end users while it positions your collection as the gateway that connects people and knowledge. The ARGUS.net collections management system is now part of the ARGUS.net Information Management Web page portal. With the portal, your valuable electronic collection is instantly accessible to the public on the Internet, to your staff on your intranet, or both. A R G U S. n e t s P o r t a l p o s i t i o n s y o u r c o l l e c t i o n a s t h e g a t e w a y t h a t c o n n e c t s p e o p l e a n d k n o w l e d g e. With its easy-to-use web-page-building front end, your site has a professionally designed look, is fully functional, and is no longer isolated from your valuable collection data. There is no need to export data: anything added or edited is instantly available the moment you press the save button. A R G U S. n e t h a s a n e a s y - to- u s e w e b - p a g e - b u i l d i n g f r o n t e n d ARGUS.net s IN FORMATION MAN AG EME NT PORT AL fe ature s : Multilingual and compliant with the Unicode standard. You can have a dataentry portal that adds, edits, searches, and displays records in any language. ARGUS Site Map lets users discover your museum through standard search engines and puts you in control. You can define what you want to be crawled. RSS Feed Generator allows you to proactively deploy dynamic information to subscribers and publish the results of any search as an RSS feed. Usage Statistics allow you to see how your site is being used. Support for personalization, including My Saved Searches, My Favorites, and My Display A R G U S. n e t i s m u l t i l i n g u a l a n d c o m p l i a n t w i t h t h e U n i c o d e s t a n d a r d Serve Various Communities by configuring ARGUS.net to meet the needs of different user communities. ARGUS.net can, for instance, dynamically display data depending on user profiles. Catalog-to-create web pages allow you to create exhibit or event-specific web pages easily and effectively without duplicating efforts.
APP BUILDE R FOR MOBILE DEVI CE S Utilizing Information Manager technology, ARGUS.net also provides a built-in App Builder to build and quickly deploy exhibit applications for mobile devices such as the ipad and iphone. By creating mobile app portals to a museum s collections, visitor experience will be enriched with self-guided tours and virtual exhibits when visiting the museum. B o t h m u s e u m p r o f e s s i o n a l s a n d m u s e u m v i s i t o r s w i l l f i n d t h a t s e a r c h i n g t h e A R G U S. n e t c o l l e c t i o n c a t a l o g i s e a s y, p o w e r f u l a n d e f f i c i e n t With an ipad, iphone, or other multimedia portal device in hand, visitors can tour a gallery and let their fingers do the walking. At the end of the tour, the user can select their favorite exhibits and e-mail them to friends and family. B u i l d I n s t a n t v i r t u a l t o u r s w i t h t h e A R G U S. n e t A p p B u i l d e r f o r m o b i l e d e v i c e s S T ATE - OF-T HE - ART TECHNOLOGY ARGUS.net is based on industry standard technology, running on MS-SQL, Oracle, and other commonly used RDBMS products. H o s t e d S e r v i c e p r o v i d e s a c o s t - e f f e c t i v e a l t e r n a t i v e t o i n - h o u s e s y s t e m s In addition, ARGUS.net is integrated with SharePoint, the most widely used content management system available today. This means that, from SharePoint, museum users can search the collections management system, display results, and view images and related digital files. The integration includes taking advantage of the existing security model (e.g., Active Directory), so that users search results reflect only data that is specific to their user profile (e.g., a Museum Educator would not be able to see Valuation and Insurance information).
O PT ION FOR 2 4/ 7 HOST IN G SE R VI CE Abou t Lu cidea Lucidea is the premier knowledge management software company, helping people navigate the ever expanding universe of information, turning it into actionable knowledge. We achieve this by providing tools that accelerate access to knowledge resources, while simplifying their management. To learn more about Argus and how it can help solve your knowledge resource management challenges, visit www.lucidea.com/argus SydneyPLUS/Questor customers can either host the software themselves, operating it on their own institution s server, or subscribe to the SydneyPLUS/Questor Hosted Service. The Hosted Service provides a cost-effective alternative to in-house systems as SydneyPLUS/Questor s team of support staff, including people that understand both the software and the technology, manage the hosted servers and provide related services (e.g. daily backups, disaster recovery and data restoration services), as well as customer support. With the Hosted Service, ARGUS.net is installed on secure central servers. Customer data and communications are protected using secure HTTP and encryption. That means that museum staff members can access it to do their daily work with confidence their data is protected. They can provide their users with appropriate access to the collection through either the Web Catalog or the Portal. DATA DRIVEN ST R AT EGY A museum s Web strategy must be data-driven, rather than depending on a set of static web pages. This means that all metadata (descriptive information about content) must be structured within a database for easier management, searching and delivery. ARGUS.net is data-driven and dynamic. For example, as new objects are catalogued, new exhibits are planned, and new events are announced, appropriate data sources within the Intranet and on the ARGUS.net-based web site are automatically updated. I NTEGRATED WEB ST R ATEGY Your intranet and the museum s public Internet site don t have to be separate systems. Instead they can be parts of one unified system, with rock-solid security and permissions management. Museum visitors with appropriate security rights can see relevant information about your collection that your museum staff members see, not a copy of the data in an island of information outside the institution s firewall. By using the ARGUS.net one system solution, you can avoid maintaining redundant and conflicting descriptions and save scarce staff time and resources.