On Collaboration and Access to Digital Cultural Heritage Content

The following is a synopsis of a presentation made by Kati Geber, Manager of CHIN’s Research and Business Intelligence unit at the Canada – U.S. Dialogue on Digital Cultural Heritage held in Ottawa, Canada in September, 2005.

Canada – US Dialogue on Digital Cultural Heritage
Presentation by Kati Geber, Manager, Research and Business Intelligence
Canadian Heritage Information Network
September, 2005

I. Introduction

Canadian Museums and CHIN have an opportunity to collaborate on the development and delivery of meaningful and accessible online cultural digital content. This document explains the manner in which CHIN believes that this collaboration would be beneficial to both parties, and to users of this content.

II. Why Collaborate?

The need to ensure awareness of digital cultural content has been made clear through research conducted at CHIN, namely through our Environmental Scan and Next Generation Virtual Museum paper, as well as from organizations such as OCLC who, identified this need in their own Environmental Scan. Awareness of digital cultural content is crucial when one considers the sheer volume of information on the World Wide Web.

In order to ensure that cultural information, such as digitized objects, are not lost in the "internet jungle", it is crucial to ensure effective access.

There are several other key facts that underline reasons why collaboration is beneficial:

1. Increasing complexity

The power of digital cultural content stems largely from the size of repositories and the range of services offered. This very size and range makes it increasingly difficult to independently meet the specific needs of individuals or organizations. This issue will become more prevalent as the environment continues to grow.

2. Digital Lifestyle

The context in which online cultural resources exist dictates that they must be responsive to a number of demands, including:

• A space for information seeking, which appeals to the cognitive aspect of the new digital lifestyle;
• A space for social gathering, which provides an interpersonal quality; and
• A new communication environment which ensures that culture can be conveyed and shared.

3. Enhancement of Particularities/Diversity

The online audience is as diverse as it is vast. Meeting the individual needs of this wide audience is a challenge for any online resource, and even more so when the subject matter is as diverse as culture. Catering to such a diverse audience means taking account of individual preferences, information seeking and learning styles. This must be done with users from different countries, with various languages who are members of many different cultural communities.

III. The Challenge of Seamless and Universal Access

The complexity involved in creating seamless and universal access to digital cultural content is considerable. As the illustration produced by Cultural Applications: Local Institutions Mediating Electronic Resources (Calimera), below, demonstrates, there are a myriad of issues from both an institutional and end-user perspective. Users seek to acquire, discuss and enjoy resources, for example, and may even wish to create and publish material using these resources. Institutions, on the other hand, have concerns such as preserving, validating and interpreting resources, on the one hand, and sharing, providing and enabling access to resources on the other.

Illustration 1 (Brophy, 2005)

Their multiplicity means that a breadth of issues must be considered, including intellectual property, authority with respect to a collection of objects, various technology issues including access and interoperability as well as dissemination strategies. The complexity involved in navigating these issues suggests that an established actor with experience would be helpful. The Canadian Heritage Information Network has experience in dealing with these issues.

IV. Collaboration and CHIN

CHIN's mission is to promote the development, presentation and preservation of Canada's digital heritage content for current and future generations. CHIN has built its reputation through collaborating with Canada's museum community and would very much like to work with organizations with a similar mission.

CHIN has experience successfully leveraging research, expertise and content resources through collaborations within the museum community and across other heritage organizations in Canada and internationally, aligning their working strategies toward common goals and joining forces to reach audiences with more impact.

Working together, we can strengthen the voices of our various communities on the Internet. The result would be successful capacity building through initiatives that respond to the needs of 21st Century museum and heritage professionals.

V. CHIN's Record of Successful Collaborations

CHIN has a track record of successful collaborations. Among these are:

1. Aggregating and Preserving Content

Creating collaborative networked knowledge environments with decentralized digital heritage content and services, spread over a network of engaged and participating audiences/organizations and communication spaces. Examples of this are the Virtual Museum of Canada, which involved increasing access to Canadian heritage collections, and the Innu Project, which was the result of a collaboration whose objective was to develop community-based environment(s) for Aboriginal heritage.

2. Using Standards, Best Practices and Guidelines

CHIN has collaborated to self-organize and create new structures through local interaction and use. Current examples include Artefacts Canada and the Canadian Museum Digital Repository (CMDR). These projects involved a collaboration on initiatives and overcoming boundaries to bring together disparate repositories.

3. Developing New/Next Generation Services

In this domain, CHIN has worked to create interactive learning environments, enabling individuals to participate in learning and social processes and solve complex problems collaboratively in a more pleasant, effective and efficient way than alone. Current initiatives include Learning with Museums, the Teachers' Centre, Community Memories and the Virtual Learning Environment. The objective with these is to initiate the creation of purposeful content and the re-purposing of content together to facilitate learning, communication and participation.

These initiatives demonstrate CHIN’s priority to respond to 21st century literacy needs, which are discussed below.

VI. Learning and Innovation at CHIN

CHIN is committed to promoting and supporting initiatives for learning and innovation. That is why we established a Research and Business Intelligence group (RBI) which is tasked with supporting this initiative, among others. Among the activities that RBI conducts to support this priority, are the following:

• creating integrated solutions;
• conducting environmental scanning;
• understanding and enabling continous change;
• conducting research and experimentation;
• establishing cross-disciplinary collaboration and alliances;
• understanding, measuring and interpreting the impact of digital heritage on society; and
• encouraging the use, engagement and participation of digital heritage.

VII. Conclusion

Canadian museums and CHIN would like to collaborate with institutions and organizations who share the goal of engaging audiences in digital cultural heritage. As described in this article, we have the capacity and experience to succesfully partner on digital cultural heritage projects.

References

Brophy, Peter. Mapping the Calimera Research Roadmap to the EC IST and eContentplus Programmes. Cultural Applications: Local Institutions Mediating Electronic Resources. Retrieved September 13, 2005 at: http://www.calimera.org/Lists/Resources%20Library/Technologies%20and%20research%20for%20local%20cultural%20services/Calimera%20Research%20Roadmap%20Mapping%20v1.doc.