Search results

Purpose: In March 2020, due to the global emergency ensuing from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Italian government closed all national museums, institutes and places of culture heritage and landscape. The shutdown highlighted the need to develop and implement digital solutions, especially through ICTs, to enhance the cultural heritage worldwide by allowing people to go on admiring it, albeit remotely. Numerous initiatives were promoted, such as virtual experiential tours, online collections and ad hoc social and digital programs, all of which contributed to the rich dialogue between people and culture. Although digital initiatives for using and enjoying the cultural heritage have been successfully developed and implemented, in Italy the process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from being completed. This chapter investigates the development and implementation of digital technologies in the museums located in the Campania Region in Southern Italy throughout the COVID-19 outbreak to identify and analyse the experiential strategies and initiatives developed through information communication technologies (ICTs) to face the emergency.

Design/Methodology/Approach: By adopting a qualitative methodology, using primary and secondary data sources through a manual content analysis, experiential strategies and initiatives employed by the Campania regional museums when using digital solutions have been identified and categorised.

Findings: Despite the effectiveness of digital initiatives, and the experiences investigated appear both significant and interesting, there is still a need to develop and implement new experiential strategies in this field.

Research Limitations: This study presents several limitations, mostly related to its qualitative explorative nature, but also because its results cannot be generalised.

Practical Implications: These first results outline the need to further develop innovative strategies and initiatives within the museums. The process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from completion, potentially providing wide margins of further evolution by means of further investments in technology innovation, to rethink and redesign the traditional management models for enhancing the cultural heritage through digital technology.

Originality: This study provides a portrait of museum experiences supported by digital technologies in a country which plays a crucial role in the field of international cultural heritage. The analysis can also usefully contribute to the existing literature due to the qualitative technique employed for carrying out the multiple case study.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the need for developing an Indian cultural heritage information system (CHIS) where the cultural heritages can efficiently document, manage and preserve and integrate with a searchable user interface mechanism. Further, the study scopes out the feasibility of developing single-window comprehensive national CHIS for all the cultural heritage properties of India enlisted in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO’s) World Heritage list.

Conservation efforts and their sustenance require the support of a knowledge base cum digital archiving and information retrieval tool. The present study identifies the basic requirements, strategies and the execution of designing a reliable information system for cultural heritage inheritances to safeguard them to facilitate access to the current and future resilient communities. Approach on issues and challenges associated while developing such an information system has also been addressed with possible recommendations.

In India, even though regional level conservation efforts are occurring, no comprehensive information system, which gives the whole perspective of the item or environment of heritage site, has been developed for the heritage sites recognized by UNESCO in its World Heritage list from India. Developing such a comprehensive digital archive for cultural heritage helps to showcase its assets and ensures its visibility globally without hampering the physical form. Application Information and Communication Technology and digital technologies can extensively be used coupled with mechanisms such as mobile devices, digital systems and content visualization techniques to support the efficient and effective management in a systemized way.

As a pilot study, this paper examined the cultural heritage properties incorporated in the UNESCO World list. There are many lesser-known and unprotected cultural heritages in different parts of the country having artistic value and the unique characteristics, and the possibility of building the similar kind of information system for them with innovative technological solutions are not covered under this study.

Access to such an exclusive digital archive in a single-window platform would greatly support administrators, tourist departments, culture departments, development administration and conservation activists. The digital version of cultural inheritances created under the cultural heritage of India must have relevance to different subject fields such as history, archeology, manuscript logy, art, administration, knowledge management, computer science and library science. Also, it ensures that the resources remain accessible to the public without any restrictions provided with a comprehensive recapitulation.

To the authors’ best knowledge, no such comprehensive system envisages or is practiced in the country. Developing such a system with technological and data infrastructure also helps to understand the value, support the activities related to cultural heritage and bring the local community to support and initiate such heritage conservation activities.

The overarching aim of this paper is to initiate a new conceptualisation of digital cultural heritage libraries' design and development that emphasises a holistic understanding of a digital cultural heritage as part of information ecology and of the activities taking place between and amongst the various elements of the ecology that are governed by social, cultural, political, economical, and technical affordances and constraints.

A research framework is developed based on viewpoints, reviews of existing literature and concepts of information ecology and activity theory.

The conceptual framework comprises of a set of dimensions: content; context; connectivity; consideration; collaboration; construction; confidence and continuity. These dimensions are indicative of the kinds of issues and questions that could be considered in transitioning a digital cultural heritage library into a system that is dynamic, and one which evolves within the stakeholders' socio-cultural contexts. The issues and questions highlighted and outlined under the dimensions may be used to help one to situate their digital cultural heritage in the space and environment it operates in, to discover which direction to take to transition the digital cultural heritage library and to safely navigate the journey for the transitioning. The dimensions may also signal the elements needing ongoing consideration as the digital cultural heritage library evolves on its journey within the ecologies concerned.

These dimensions are indicative of the kinds of issues and questions that could be considered in transitioning a digital cultural heritage library into a system that is dynamic and one which evolves within the stakeholders' socio-cultural contexts. The issues and questions highlighted and outlined under the dimensions may be used to help one to situate their digital cultural heritage in the space and environment it operates in, to discover which direction to take to transition the digital cultural heritage library and to safely navigate the journey for the transitioning. The dimensions may also signal the elements needing ongoing consideration as the digital cultural heritage library evolves on its journey within the ecologies concerned.

This research presents concepts from information ecology and activity theory that could be incorporated in digital library research, design and development.

To understand the experiences, expectations and suggestions of digital nomads towards intangible cultural heritage in the places they travel.

The qualitative research method was used and the research design is a phenomenological design. Multiple qualitative research design steps were followed in obtaining the research data. In this context, online interviews were conducted with a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers, and the social media accounts of digital nomads were monitored. The sample consists of nine digital nomads who were interviewed online and five digital nomads whose videos and comments shared on social media were monitored. The inductive thematic analysis method was used to analyse the data.

It was found that digital nomads experience intangible cultural heritage elements, especially religious rituals and food culture, and actively participate in activities and rituals related to these elements as well as sharing them on their social media accounts. It was also concluded that the participants expected to work towards the protection of intangible cultural heritage elements through a number of activities such as awareness-raising and education, and that it is difficult to experience cultural heritage in societies that are not foreign-friendly.

The data were obtained from volunteer participants consisting of digital nomads and digital nomads who shared their experiences on social media. It is suggested that traditional food and religious rituals as intangible cultural heritage should be promoted and transferred by sharing the experiences these digital nomads on digital platforms.

Religious rituals and food cultures are prominent in the ICH experiences of digital nomads. Digital nomads who stay longer in their destination than tourists can play an intermediary role in promoting and transmitting this heritage. The social media and other digital platforms enable digital nomads to share their experiences of cultural heritage and create a global dialogue and understanding through these experiences.

The experiences and expectations of digital nomads towards ICH require a reassessment of traditional approaches to the preservation and transmission of cultural heritage. By experiencing different cultural heritages and sharing these experiences through digital platforms, digital nomads contribute to the reinterpretation and reproduction of cultural heritage. This process reveals that cultural heritage is not limited to a particular community or geography, but is rather a global phenomenon, and therefore needs to be addressed from a global perspective.

It is one of the pioneering studies on the experiences of digital nomads towards intangible cultural heritage.

The purpose of this paper is to review the current status of collaboration in cultural heritage preservation in East Asia, including digital projects, and to suggest practical improvements based on a cultural structuralism perspective.

Through exploratory research, the paper addresses aspects for successful collaboration in cultural heritage digitisation in East Asia.

The paper indicates the difference in collaboration of cultural heritage digitisation between regions such as Europe and the unique situation in East Asia.

If collaboration between the countries of East Asia was implemented then such a community could deal with the issues of cultural heritage by having a standard scheme or policy.

There has been little literature published on East Asian cultural heritage initiatives, particularly in the area of digitisation and digital preservation.

The purpose of this paper is to situate the activity of digitisation to increase access to cultural and heritage content alongside the objectives of the Open Access Movement (OAM). It demonstrates that increasingly open licensing of digital cultural heritage content is creating opportunities for researchers in the arts and humanities for both access to and analysis of cultural heritage materials.

The paper is primarily a literature and scoping review of the current digitisation licensing climate, using and embedding examples from ongoing research projects and recent writings on Open Access (OA) and digitisation to highlight both opportunities and barriers to the creation and use of digital heritage content from galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM).

The digital information environment in which digitised content is created and delivered has changed phenomenally, allowing the sharing and reuse of digital data and encouraging new advances in research across the sector, although issues of licensing persist. There remain further opportunities for understanding how to: study use and users of openly available cultural and heritage content; disseminate and encourage the uptake of open cultural data; persuade other institutions to contribute their data into the commons in an open and accessible manner; build aggregation and search facilities to link across information sources to allow resource discovery; and how best to use high-performance computing facilities to analyse and process the large amounts of data the author is now seeing being made available throughout the sector.

It is hoped that by pulling together this discussion, the benefits to making material openly available have been made clear, encouraging others in the GLAM sector to consider making their collections openly available for reuse and repurposing.

This paper will encourage others in the GLAM sector to consider licensing their collections in an open and reusable fashion. By spelling out the range of opportunities for researchers in using open cultural and heritage materials it makes a contribution to the discussion in this area.

Increasing the quantity of high-quality OA resources in the cultural heritage sector will lead to a richer research environment which will increase the understanding of history, culture and society.

This paper has pulled together, for the first time, an overview of the current state of affairs of digitisation in the cultural and heritage sector seen through the context of the OAM. It has highlighted opportunities for researchers in the arts, humanities and social and historical sciences in the embedding of open cultural data into both their research and teaching, whilst scoping the wave of cultural heritage content which is being created from institutional repositories which are now available for research and use. As such, it is a position paper that encourages the open data agenda within the cultural and heritage sector, showing the potentials that exists for the study of culture and society when data are made open.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the digital development and utilization of China’s intangible cultural heritage resources, research on the theft of intangible cultural heritage resources and knowledge integration based on linked data is proposed to promote the standardized description of intangible cultural heritage knowledge and realize the digital dissemination and development of intangible cultural heritage.

In this study, firstly, the knowledge organization theory and semantic Web technology are used to describe the intangible cultural heritage digital resource objects in metadata specifications. Secondly, the ontology theory and technical methods are used to build a conceptual model of the intangible cultural resources field and determine the concept sets and hierarchical relationships in this field. Finally, the semantic Web technology is used to establish semantic associations between intangible cultural heritage resource knowledge.

The study findings indicate that the knowledge organization of intangible cultural heritage resources constructed in this study provides a solution for the digital development of intangible cultural heritage in China. It also provides semantic retrieval with better knowledge granularity and helps to visualize the knowledge content of intangible cultural heritage.

This study summarizes and provides significant theoretical and practical value for the digital development of intangible cultural heritage and the resource description and knowledge fusion of intangible cultural heritage can help to discover the semantic relationship of intangible cultural heritage in multiple dimensions and levels.

The purpose of this study is to gather some empirical, baseline information on the perceived needs of end‐users of digital cultural heritage resources. The study was funded by the National Library of New Zealand in order to take end‐user needs into consideration more fully in its development and presentation of digital cultural heritage resources.

The study's research design involved a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach; a user survey comprising self‐administered, semi‐structured questionnaires, seven face‐to‐face semi‐structured interviews and one focus group.

The findings outline the barriers users face in using New Zealand digital cultural heritage resources. They also highlight the user needs and features and characteristics they most desire in digital cultural heritage resources.

Only a handful of studies exist about end‐user needs with respect to the digitisation of cultural heritage materials and very few are research‐based articles. This research is the first of its kind to describe information needs of users of digital cultural heritage resources in New Zealand, and pays particular attention to the needs of historical researchers.

There is a wealth of value hidden in regional cultural heritage, but its preservation status is not optimistic. This study introduces a method that focuses on the inherent cultural value of regional cultural heritage to preserve it by value construction and release.

Based on the great value of regional cultural heritage due to spatial adjacency and temporal continuity, this paper focuses on its inherent cultural value to explore the preservation path and chooses Shichahai cultural heritage digital resources for a case study. This paper draws lessons from the narrative method of ancient Chinese historiography, constructs a cultural space and tells cultural stories. A linked data organization model for digital resources is created to construct a conceptual cultural space. Then, the space is materialized by linked dataset creation. The authors tell cultural stories discovered from the space, which are presented by various user interfaces using visualization technologies.

A cultural space promotes the development of a fine-grained description of regional cultural heritage and aids in relationship discovery to enhance the value construction ability. Additionally, storytelling via interactive user interfaces is helpful in the utilization and dissemination of knowledge extracted from a cultural space and enhances the value release of regional cultural heritage. In this way, a path with the inherent cultural value of regional cultural heritage as the core is established, and preservation is achieved.

This study focuses on the inherent cultural value of regional cultural heritage and proposes a new path to preserve these resources. This approach will enrich research on the preservation of regional cultural heritage and contribute to the construction and release of its cultural value.

This study examines a phygital approach to rural cultural heritage tourism, adopted by a rural community in Sapphaya, Chai Nat Province, Thailand, in response to the Covid-19 crisis. Specifically, it investigates a community’s initiatives to amalgamate its physical and digital marketing communications in order to engage with consumers as a strategy for destination recovery and resilience.

This is a qualitative exploratory study involving three stages of action, applying two research approaches: (1) participatory action research (PAR) with Sapphaya’s tourism stakeholders, and (2) social media research utilising netnographic analysis of Sapphaya’s tourism social enterprise social media pages.

The findings indicate that a phygital rural cultural heritage strategy can facilitate the interconnectivity between a destination’s physical and digital dimensions of its cultural heritage tourism product, thereby enhancing its intrinsic value, meaning and experiential perceptions. Specifically, it recommends that a successful community-based phygitalisation strategy requires grassroot engagement across all stages of planning, development, implementation and management of the rural cultural heritage tourism product.

The paper focusses on the cultural heritage tourism strategy adopted by a rural community across the physical-digital-phygital spectrum to augment its sustainable tourism development during a time of crisis. A framework for phygital rural cultural heritage as a strategy for destination resilience and recovery is also proposed.

This study adopts a local engagement approach to develop a cooperative community heritage management strategy, based upon local rural capacity building towards digitalisation and empowering innovative partnerships amongst its stakeholders.