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Introduction

Dynamic Collections Plus is a collaborative platform for documenting archaeological artefacts and their digital counterparts. It is designed as a local network of independently curated exhibits sharing a common, collaboratively built pool of items: artefacts, 3D models, images, videos, documents and bibliographic references, together with their metadata and paradata.

Core concepts

The platform distinguishes clearly between the physical object and its digital representations:

  • Artefact — the record of the physical object: inventory number, description, typology, material, chronology, conservation state, find site, and so on. The artefact is the documentation anchor: models and media are attached to it.
  • Model — a 3D digital replica of an artefact, displayed in the browser through the embedded 3DHOP viewer. Each model carries its own metadata (author, owner, license) and paradata (acquisition method, software used, point/polygon counts, textures, number of scans or pictures) documenting how the digital object was produced.
  • Media — images, videos, documents and bibliographic references attached to an artefact.
  • Institution — the organisation (museum, university, laboratory…) that owns or curates items. Every item belongs to an institution, and permissions are scoped accordingly.
  • Collection — a personal, curated selection of items from the shared pool. Collections can be exported to and imported from JSON files, so they can be saved, shared and re-used.
  • Vocabularies — controlled lists (materials, typologies, conservation states, licenses…) that keep the metadata consistent across contributors.

Public area and reserved area

Without logging in, visitors can browse the published content: the home page with its galleries and collections, the artefact and model pages with the interactive 3D viewer, the geographic map and the chronological timeline.

Logging in unlocks the dashboard and the editing tools, according to your role.

User roles

Role What it can do
Author Creates and edits artefacts, models and media. Authors can edit the items they created.
Supervisor Same as Author, plus editing rights on every item belonging to their own institution.
Administrator Full control: all items of all institutions, user management, institution management, controlled vocabularies.

Accounts are created by an Administrator (or Supervisor) from the dashboard: you will receive an email with your access credentials and a link to set your password.

Continue with Getting started.