Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage

Theoretical and practical perspectives from a range of disciplines on the challenges of using digital media in interpretation and representation of cultural heritage.

The rapid development of digital technologies continues to have far reaching effects on our daily lives. This book explains how digital media—in providing the material and infrastructure for a host of practices and interactions—affect identities, bodies, social relations, artistic practices, and the environment. Theorizing Digital Cultures: Shows students the importance of theory for understanding digital cultures and presents key theories in an easy-to-understand way Considers the key topics of cybernetics, online identities, aesthetics and ecologies Explores the power relations between individuals and groups that are produced by digital technologies Enhances understanding through applied examples, including YouTube personalities, Facebook’s ‘like’ button and holographic performers Clearly structured and written in an accessible style, this is the book students need to get to grips with the key theoretical approaches in the field. It is essential reading for students and researchers of digital culture and digital society throughout the social sciences.

The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation critiques digital cultural heritage concepts and their application to data, developing new theories, curatorial practices and a more-than-human museology for a contemporary and future world. Presenting a diverse range of case examples from around the globe, Cameron offers a critical and philosophical reflection on the ways in which digital cultural heritage is currently framed as societal data worth passing on to future generations in two distinct forms: digitally born and digitizations. Demonstrating that most perceptions of digital cultural heritage are distinctly western in nature, the book also examines the complicity of such heritage in climate change, and environmental destruction and injustice. Going further still, the book theorizes the future of digital data, heritage, curation and the notion of the human in the context of the profusion of new types of societal data and production processes driven by the intensification of data economies and through the emergence of new technologies. In so doing, the book makes a case for the development of new types of heritage that comprise AI, automated systems, biological entities, infrastructures, minerals and chemicals – all of which have their own forms of agency, intelligence and cognition. The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museums, archives, libraries, galleries, archaeology, cultural heritage management, information management, curatorial studies and digital humanities.

Theorizing digital archives : power, access and new order -- Deciding for digital archives improvement through collection management systems -- Community-based digital archives : programming alternatives -- Creating and curating digital archives : horizontal and vertical structures -- Using digital archives : online encounters, stories of impact and postcolonial agendas -- Digital archives' objects : law and tangibility -- Conclusion. Cultural production in the present with reference to the past and directed at the future.

The rapid development of digital technologies continues to have far reaching effects on our daily lives. This book explains how digital media--in providing the material and infrastructure for a host of practices and interactions--affect identities, bodies, social relations, artistic practices, and the environment.--

This book addresses the state-of-the-art initiatives as well as challenges, policy, and strategy issues in developing a digital heritage ecosystem within the broader context of an emerging digital culture. Case studies are drawn from the United States, Europe, and Asia to showcase the breadth of innovative ideas in delivering, communicating, interpreting, and transforming cultural heritage content and experience through multi-modal, multimedia interfaces. Aiming to offer a balanced overview of digital heritage and culture issues and technologies, the book pulls together expert views and updates on these four broad areas, namely, a) policy and strategy, b) applications, c) business models, and d) emerging concepts and directions. Policy and strategy chapters provide insights into how digital heritage strategy and policy are formulated and implemented in cultural heritage institutions and public agencies.Applications chapters present novel installed and mobile applications deploying technical tools in innovative assemblies and evaluate their usefulness, effectiveness along with other metrics in delivering an enriched user experience.Business model chapters unveil a variety of partnership models that have been successfully structured for the benefit of stakeholders.Emerging concepts and directions chapters propose research directions pointing to new signposts in technologically enhanced delivery of digital heritage and culture. This practical book will be of interest to policy makers, business people, researchers, curators, and educators as well as the culture-minded public seeking to understand how the burgeoning field of digital heritage and culture may impact our social, cultural, and recreational activities. Contents:Strategy and Policy:IT-enabled Innovative Services as a Museum Strategy: Experience of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (James Quo-Ping Lin)Designing Digital Heritage Competence Centers: A Swedish Model (Halina Gottlieb)7 Lessons Learned for Digital Culture (Christine Kuan)Applications and Services:Reinventing MoMA's Education Programs for the 21st Century Visitor (Jackie Armstrong, Deborah Howes, and Wendy Woon)Onemillionmuseummoments: A Cultural Intertwingling (Suzanne Akhavan Sarraf)Documentary Storytelling Using Immersive and Interactive Media (Michael Mouw)The Making of Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum Virtual Temple (June Sung Sew and Eric Deleglise)Digital Media in Museums: A Personal History (Selma Thomas)Using New Media for Exhibit Interpretation: A Case Study, Yuan Ming Yuan Qing Emperors' Splendid Gardens (Herminia Din, Darrell L Bailey and Fang-Yin Lin)Business and Partnership Models:The Virtual Collection of Asian Masterpieces: A Universal Online Museum (Manus Brinkman)A Tale on a Leaf: Promoting Indonesian Literature and Culture Through the Development of the Lontar Digital Library (Ruly Darmawan and Djembar Lembasono)The Future of History is Mobile: Experiencing Heritage on Personal Devices (Christopher Jones)Technology and Other Issues:A Cultural Heritage Panorama: Trajectories in Embodied Museography (Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw)From Product to Process: New Directions in Digital Heritage (Eugene Ch'ng, Henry Chapman and Vince Gaffney)I Sho U: An Innovative Method for Museum Visitor Evaluation (Anita Kocsis and Sarah Kenderdine)Digital Cultural Heritage is Getting Crowded: Crowdsourced, Crowd-funded, and Crowd-engaged (Leonard Steinbach) Readership: Policy makers, business people, researchers, curators, and educators as well as the culture-minded public seeking to understand how the burgeoning field of digital heritage and culture may impact our social, cultural, and recreational activities. Keywords:Digitalization;Digital Heritage;Figital Culture;Museology;Museum;Virtual Collection;Mobile;Outreach;PolicyKey Features:Most journals and books on digital heritage are focused on technology solutions and project case studies. They do not tackle policy, strategy and business issues. This book includes discussion from senior managers at leading museums and institutions explaining their respective organisation's policy and strategy. In addition to projects already implemented, some chapters give insights into emerging concepts and useful lessons from past experienceThis eclectic volume includes contributions from Asia, Europe, and the United States. Contributions from museums, universities, and companies provide a global lens on digital heritage and culture in practice and researchIt is aimed at students and non-specialists while also containing materials for professionals. The affordable price of the book is believed to be attractive to students and non-specialist adults, and also within the price band of competing titles

This book explores the analysis and interpretation, discovery and retrieval of a variety of non-textual objects, including image, music and moving image. Bringing together chapters written by leading experts in the field, this book provides an overview of the theoretical and academic aspects of digital cultural documentation and considers both technical and strategic issues relating to cultural heritage projects, digital asset management and sustainability. Managing Digital Cultural Objects: Analysis, discovery and retrieval draws from disciplines including information retrieval, library and information science (LIS), digital preservation, digital humanities, cultural theory, digital media studies and art history. It’s argued that this multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach is both necessary and useful in the age of the ubiquitous and mobile Web. Key topics covered include: • Managing, searching and finding digital cultural objects • Data modelling for analysis, discovery and retrieval • Social media data as a historical source • Visual digital humanities • Digital preservation of audio content • Searching and creating affinities in web music collections • Film retrieval on the web. Readership: The book will provide inspiration for students seeking to develop creative and innovative research projects at Masters and PhD levels and will be essential reading for those studying digital cultural object management as well as practitioners in the field.

Theoretical and practical perspectives from a range of disciplines on the challenges of using digital media in interpretation and representation of cultural heritage.