Museums of all sizes and budgets use the Argus CMS from Lucidea to increase collection accessibility and build cultural communities with an engaging, immersive, online presence.
Today’s museum professionals focus increasingly on digital outreach, striving to offer an engaging multimedia Web presence and collection-supported narratives, for an immersive, educational, and inspiring visitor experience.
Lucidea’s Approach to Collections Management Software
In support of those shared goals, implementing a fully featured Collections Management System (CMS) with unlimited potential to deliver anything a museum professional can imagine is critical.
Lucidea’s market-leading Argus CMS is a flexible Web-based collections management system used daily in museums and galleries of all sizes and budgets, all around the world.
In brief, it enables museum professionals to:
- Offer access to objects and exhibits via a public portal
- Provide in-depth documentation about each artifact
- Leverage efficient purpose-built workflows with minimal training
- Deploy sustainable, cutting-edge technology that remains relevant as the collection and requirements grow
In his research-based blog post, Why Well-Being is at the Heart of Museum Experiences, John H. Falk, Executive Director of the Institute for Learning Innovation, writes, “The key insight is that museum experiences successfully create value by measurably enhancing a fundamental public need: the desire for personal, intellectual, social, and physical well-being.”
Lucidea believes the right CMS can be at the heart of a museum’s outreach to virtual visitors—knowing that well-being is ever more important in a digital first world.
The Argus CMS offers many capabilities to support the four pillars of well-being, including:
- Argus enables virtual access to collections of personal interest to individuals, e.g., for genealogical research or materials related to the history of a municipality.
- The immersive collection exploration experience provided by museum professionals who use the expanded curation and multimedia capabilities within Argus contributes to visitors’ intellectual development.
- The integrated social sharing available to Argus users helps create a cultural community that enhances the museum experience and a feeling of connectedness.
- WCAG 2.2 AA compliance supports the physical well-being of portal visitors who need screen readers and other visual or auditory assistance.
Facilitating happy, healthy cultural communities—behind the scenes for staff, and out front for visitors—happens when museum professionals can provide:
- An integrated portal: with real time publishing and updates, your website is always current, without any “extra” steps.
- Full multimedia toolkit: engage virtual visitors with images, sound, videos, or documents to deliver an absorbing and inspiring experience to all.
- Mobile access for visitors and staff: enable staff collections management and visitor exploration anytime, anywhere.
Lucidea’s Values and Beliefs
In addition to market-leading CMS software, Lucidea offers clients the knowledge that we stand with them as a trusted partner, that the company has a 30-year history in the collections management space, and that we have built enduring successful relationships with many clients of all sizes and budgets in the heritage sector.
Lucidea’s clients enjoy a partnership with a values-based company whose approach rests on six pillars that inform everything they do: Partnership, Security, Access, Discovery, Independence, and Integration.
Partnership
For a vendor/client relationship to flourish there must be mutual interest in client success, rather than a short term or commodity orientation, and both parties must work together to ensure ongoing achievement and results. Partnership includes a consultative, collaborative element; vendor and client make each other smarter and more effective. With over thirty years’ experience (and wisdom gained) serving the collections management needs of small, mid-sized and large organizations in many geographies and disciplines, Lucidea is well positioned to serve as a supportive advisor to its clients and potential clients.
Security
Since universal access to organizational information assets is necessary, secure access is critical. Comprehensive information security includes supporting clients’ ability to manage:
- Permissions for databases, records, and fields – require high level of granularity
- Role and user based permissions
- Granting access to the right information by the right people at the right times
- Privacy and data security (e.g. donor records)
Information access
Universal access to organizational information assets must incorporate web-based delivery, multi browser compatibility, mobile device support (including iOS and Android apps), multiple channels, global coverage for multi-location organizations, and 24/7/365 availability.
Search and discovery
Powerful search capabilities are fundamental to optimized content discovery, but there are multiple forms of information discovery – it is not only about basic search and retrieval. The below activities must come together:
- Content curation is critical to ensuring the quality and accuracy of information assets, including providing the right information to the right person at the right time.
- Content curators select, organize and maintain databases of the best and most relevant documents, images, videos, sound clips, periodicals and even websites, in ways that accelerate visitor information discovery.
- The best discovery involves end user input, thereby leveraging the wisdom of the crowd…social input does not necessarily create content but very definitely influences its quality and use.
- Visitors must be able to search, browse, receive alerts, and leverage what they find: the ability to act on content (download, save, print, share, comment, tag) is critical.
Self-sufficiency
Technology related self-sufficiency and independence covers CMS application configuration and customization options, especially for non-coders. Lucidea supports our clients’ power of choice regarding preferred configuration and customization for the user/visitor experience and the user/visitor interface.
Integration
Collections management does not exist in a vacuum. CMS software should not dictate the way people work and how they do things—it should integrate with existing workflows, systems and applications, build on existing assets (including people and existing information repositories) and work seamlessly with the organization’s current IT strategy.
What Lucidea’s Argus Clients Tell Us
“We recommend Argus because it’s customizable, Web-based, and has a knowledgeable support team – the people behind the system have been fantastic; it’s a relationship.”
“Argus has definitely assisted with workflow—it’s a single venue for input on the back-end, and public expression on the front end.”
“Argus has taken everything we do to another level. Whether that is creating a new display, locating items, consistency of organization and standards, to how we work with the collection. It offers accessibility for staff as well as the public and is a great success.”
“It made a big difference that Lucidea’s Client Services Team members have sector knowledge and have worked with all kinds of heritage institutions. We were very well taken care of throughout.”
When you are a Lucidea client, you are in good company. We would love to help you build an engaging online presence that supports healthy, happy communities.
