Inventories and Surveys for Heritage Management

This is the first online step-by-step guide to the design, implementation, and maintenance of heritage inventories and surveys.

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A critical first step in the conservation of cultural heritage is to identify and understand the places we want to protect. Inventories and related data-collection activities such as surveys are essential tools in this effort, and heritage-related legislation across the globe now universally mandates their use. However, despite wide understanding of the importance and critical role of inventories and surveys in documenting heritage places, practical, up-to-date guidance on how these instruments should be created, implemented, and maintained has been sorely lacking-until now.

This publication provides a step-by-step guide to identifying, recording, and managing information on heritage resources as a basis for their conservation and management. It is drawn from the Getty Conservation Institute's two decades of experience and research in this topical area, including ongoing work related to its open-source Arches Cultural Heritage Data Management Platform and, previously, the creation of the Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA)-Jordan. It is also drawn from SurveyLA, a multiyear undertaking of historic resources that was a joint project of the City of Los Angeles and Getty and is considered the largest American urban historic resource survey assessment to date.


This open-access publication provides essential guidance on digital inventories and surveys for the identification, conservation, and management of heritage places