Open sourcing digital heritage : digital surrogates, museums and knowledge management in the age of open networks

Abstract

I study the emergence of traditional online activities of the museums and their fears in the vivid and multifaceted Internet and how the open Internet is setting out to compete with museums. The second main topic of this work is the role of technology in the openness of digital heritage. Technology is always present when dealing with digital heritage, and understanding the technical framework is essential when evaluating, for example, long-term preservation issues or accessibility. I used three different kinds of sources in my study: literary, case studies and application development. First, I have read studies that are related to digital heritage: museology literature, museum informatics literature and information technology studies. Secondly, I studied online digital heritage materials. How can these be found and who are creating these resources? By whose terms can they be used? Why some materials are open and why some are not? Lastly, I have resorted to my own experience as a developer of a cultural heritage information system and as an open source enthusiast. I created technical proposals that demonstrate some solutions for documentation, openness and long-term preservation of digital heritage. I was able to spot several structural issues that negatively affect the ability of the heritage organisations to participate in the creation of open digital heritage. These disadvantages can be dubbed an institutional burden of official heritage institutions. The institutional burden is related to the practices of organisations, to the official status of these organisations and to the technology that they use when creating digital materials. I was able to demonstrate that technical implementations affect the visibility of the museum materials to search engines, the flexibility of the documentation and long-term preservation. The issues of the institutional burden are partly linked to these technical questions. A well-designed information system supports multiple documentation types, and openness of data does not require extra work, which, in turn, saves the resources of the organisation. Nevertheless, this requires changes in the information system design for heritage organisations.