Heurist is an “academic knowledge management system” developed at the University of Sydney and is the brainchild of Dr Ian Johnson. It draws together Ian’s experience with archaeological data management systems as well as incorporating aspects of his research into best methods of managing time data in archaeology. Ian developed a system called TimeMap, to integrate concepts of time with mapping data. Many of the ideas developed in TimeMap are incorporated into Heurist.
Heurist is therefore has the potential for being a good fit for people dealing with science and humanities data, as it has unique capabilities to manage both time and space built in to its architecture. Heurist has a different approach to management of data to many other systems. Backed by a powerful relational database (MySQL or MariaDB), the Heurist interface allows one to deal with the data in a way that makes sense to those of us working with science and humanities data. Locational data is displayed on a built-in Google maps interface and basic editing (creation of points, polygons etc) can be done directly into the database if required. Time data can be entered as calendar dates, approximate dates or radiocarbon dates (with confidence intervals) and time lines are automatically generated for all records with dates.
Records can be linked through a series of pre-defined relationships, which are then indicated on viewing the data. So, for example, a record concerning a site (displayed with its location marked on the map and a timeline of applicable dates) will show pointers to other records to which it is linked (for example photos or reports of the site). Heurist includes a bibliographic suite of record types to manage bibliographic references, which can be linked to any other records in the database. Other record types are available where previously defined in the system by other users, or of course one can add one’s own specific record types.
Users can share access to databases, managed by access controls, which allow differential access to different parts of the database, if required. Features within the database allow users to share information easily with each other (for example messages noting what records have been added etc) and even maintain a blog within the database.
Heurist can import and export a range of formats and is scalable from as small and simple as you need to capable of handling vast and complex datasets, seamlessly and without any need for porting the data from one system to another. Heurist has been successfully used on a range of projects over the past 7 years. It provides the database behind the Dictionary of Sydney project, a 3D imagery project on Gallipoli for the ABC, the ARC-funded Digital Harlem project and another ARC project on the history of Balinese paintings.
A Heurist database was developed for the Ministry of Culture in Bahrain for their World Heritage Nomination of the Pearling Testimony of Bahrain. The project has since been listed as a World Heritage Site.
Heurist is available as open source software (see the code repository on Google Code), for installation on a server. Some technical expertise is required to install it. If you are interested in using Heurist, please contact us and we can advise on the best implementation for your needs. ArcheFact is an active contributor to Heurist (code, fixes and other expertise) and we have our own instance available for clients.
Heurist and FAIMS are now collaborating so that Heurist can be used as a database to manage the data collected with the FAIMS field recording mobile app. This promises to be a very powerful combination, which we look forward to implementing for our clients. The combination generated a lot of interest at the CAA 2013 conference in Perth.