1. From Digital Collections & Digital Curation
to Social Collections & Citizen Curators
Elena Lagoudi
September 2012

2. Digital collections
have a 50+ years history

3. 1960s-1980s: digitization and
cataloguing

4. 1990s: first collections online

5. Characteristics
of digital collections 1960-2000
► National standardization
► National catalogues
► Communities of interest
► Personalization
► User participation
► Virtual exhibitions
► Early metrics

6. Even in the beginning, digital culture was
about the people:
► From object oriented to people oriented
► Interest in communities of users
► Searchability and findability was a key issue

7. Example 1
► Digital collections are people oriented

8. Even though the early Web was ‘read-only’,
museum technologists experiment with:
► Personalization
SAGRES system (Bertoletti and Costa, 1999)
► Crowdsourcing + User Participation
InTouch exhibition, Science Museum, 1998
► Communities of interest
Los Angeles Culture Net (LACN), one of the first crowdsourcing
projects, 1997

9. User-centric
even with web 1.0 technology
SAGRES system, Brazil, 1999

10. Example 2
► Digital collections are organized in such way
as to be searchable and findable by people

11. Documentation standards
even with web 1.0 technology
CIDOC Board Members, 1995 ICOM’s CIDOC 1st newsletter, 1989

12. Even though in the early Web 1.0 data did not
interact with each other much, museum
technologists discuss:
► National standardization
CHIN (Canada)
► International standardization
ICOM’s CIDOC
► National catalogues
National Inventory Program (Canada), Inventaire
General (France)

13. Example 3
► Digital collections are to be studied,
improved and developed

14. Metrics
even with web 1.0 technology
Museum pages in WWW Virtual Library, 1995

15. 1200 sites in 1997
630 sites in 1996
12 sites in 1995

16. Professional bodies
even with web 1.0 technology
1st museum technologists’
conference, 1995

17. Even in the early Web 1.0 museums understood the importance of
sharing expertise and nurturing communities of interest:
► 1967: MCN (Museum Computer Network) USA, MDA
(Museum Documentation Association) UK
► 1987: Museums and the Web conference, discussing
innovative ideas:
1997 Museums and the Web presentation:
‘The Anatomy of a Web Raising: Building Communities in the Digital
Frontier by David Jensen,Getty Information Institute‘
about Los Angeles Culture Net (LACN), one of the first crowdsourcing
projects referred to as 'web raising‘

18. 2000-2012:
The rise of web 2.0 culture

19. The social web: it’s about
connections
►Sharing content: blogs, wikis, podcasts
►Self-publishing content: YouTube, Flickr
►Adding to existing content: Wikipedia
►Discussions: forums, chats
►Tailoring information: RSS feeds, email
alerts
►Bringing people together: Facebook,
MySpace

20. What are the characteristics of
the web 2.0?
► Social networks make the web a social
interaction platform
► Sharing is easy: everyone is a broadcaster
► Multi-media win over simple text
► Participatory culture calls for user
involvement from design to evaluation

21. Digital collections develop rapidly
► Digitization standards improve
► Documentation standards develop
► International depositories grow
► Digital curation emerges
► Interpretation for digital platforms gets more
sophisticated
► E-learning platforms develop
► Mobile content and m-learning become bigger

22. ► Traditional collections ► Digital collections
Authority Experiences
Closed narratives Stories
Exclusive Inclusive
Object oriented People oriented
Obscure Findable
Invitation-only Open and accessible

23. Digital collections are more visited
MOMA
TATE
22 million
online visitors 18 million Metropolit an
47 million
2.2m
onsite visitors 4.5m
6m
0 10000000 20000000 30000000 40000000 50000000

24. Museums become social

25. Collections go mobile

26. Digital collections need digital
curators
► Digital curation: the active management and
appraisal of digital information over its entire
life cycle. (Pennock)

27. Digital curators:
►manage the context of digital
collections,
►define their semantic context,
►facilitate data exchange
►fulfill the ‘5 rules for cultural heritage
content’

28. 5 rules for cultural heritage content
1. Discoverable- it is where I am and where I look
for it
2. Meaningful- I can understand it
3. Responsive- to my needs, moods, location
4. Useable, shareable- I can pass it on and share
5. Available at all 3 locations- onsite, online and
offsite
Seb Chan, 2009

29. 5 steps for digital collections
infrastructure
1. Great digitization- so that they are preserved
2. Great documentation- so that they are interpreted
3. Great content- so that they are engaging
4. Great collections management- so that they are
structured
5. Great open, linked data- so that they are
searchable and findable

30. Digital collections of digital assets
► What makes a digital
file into a digital asset?
Re-usability
► The life-cycle of a Preservation Interlinking
digital asset:
Creation/authoring Distributing

31. Good documentation depends on
good standards
► Conceptual models for documentation:
CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM)
EDM Conceptual Model
FRBROO
► Metadata schemas
Cataloguing Cultural Objects (CCO)
Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA)
MARC
Dublin Core
SPECTRUM
MIDAS
VRA Core
Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO)

32. Why are standards important?
► So that authenticity can be guaranteed
► So that documentation can be homogenous
► So that data can be semantically linked to
each other
► So that interoperability is achieved
► So that users can search for cultural data
across many collections, in many countries,
in many ways

33. From web 2.0 to web 3.0
► The ‘web of data’ or the ‘semantic web’ is a
web where:
►Data relates to each other
►Searches produce meaningful connections
►New research is facilitated

34. The semantic web is
data and people oriented
► ontologies ► social discoveries
► taxonomies ► folksonomies
► standardization of ► semantic searches
metadata ► immersive experiences
► conceptual reference ► crowd-sourcing
models ► user generated content
► interoperability +community generated
► depositories content
► contextual authority

35. Digital collections and
the semantic web today:
3 facts that underpin everything
we do

36. FACT 1
Digital collections today facilitate new, open
and distributed contextualization
structures

37. FACT 2
Socially-oriented cultural heritage content
creates inter-connections across groups
and communities

38. FACT 3
The social role of cultural heritage
organizations and
the culture of openness that Linked Open
Data advocate present
opportunities for creating new and collective
knowledge

39. Examples of new projects that have
to do with people
(‘social discovery’)
and maps
(‘deep mapping’)

40. Crowd-sourcing:
the act of taking work once performed within
an organisation and outsourcing it to the
general public in an open call (Howe 2006)

41. Old Weather Project: crowdsourced
documentation
The public helps scientists recover weather
observations made by United States’ ships since
the mid-19th century.
These transcriptions will contribute to climate
model projections and will improve knowledge of
past environmental conditions.
Historians will use this work to track past ship
movements and tell the stories of the people on
board.

42. http://www.oldweather.org/
► National Maritime Museum UK in
collaboration with Zooniverse

43. Old Weather Project:
logbooks and the people that kept them

44. Ancient Lives: crowdsourced
archaeology
Ancient Lives is putting hundreds of thousands of
images of Greek papyri fragments online and
asking the public to transcribe and catalogue
them.
Its goal is to increase the momentum by which
scholars have traditionally identified known and
unknown literary texts, and the private documents
and letters that open up a window into the ancient
lives of Graeco-Roman Egypt.

45. www.ancientlives.org
► Zooniverse + researchers, papyrologists
and Egypt Exploration Society

46. ‘Deep Maps’
digital cultural mapping
geo-narratives
spatial narratives

47. Deep maps:
A dynamic virtual environment that allows users to
identify and experience the reciprocal influences of
space on human culture and human events for the
purpose of constructing spatial narratives and
making spatial arguments.
A deep map contains geolocated information from
multiple sources that convey their source,
contingency and context of creation; it is both
integrated and queryable through indexes of time
and space.
The Polis Centre Blog, 2012

48. Deep mapping
is an epistemology for studying spatial patterns,
processes, or phenomena through the integration
of a wide-range of spatially and temporally
enabled sources.
From the Summer Institute ‘Spatial Narratives and Deep Maps:
Explorations in Advanced Geo-spatial Technologies and the Spatial
Humanities’, June 2012

49. HyperCities: exploring urban history
► HyperCities is a collaborative research and
educational platform for traveling back in
time to explore the historical layers of city
spaces in an interactive, hypermedia
environment.

50. HyperCities: Rome base map

51. HyperCities: 1659 map of central Europe

52. ArchAtlas: mapping archaeology
► ArchAtlas is a web-orientated
archaeological mapping and research
project, founded by the late Prof. Andrew
Sherratt, which continues to be developed
at the Department of Archaeology,
University of Sheffield, UK.

53. ArchAtlas

54. ArchAtlas

55. CivilWarData150: deep mapping
history
► A collaborative project to share and connect
Civil War related data across local, state
and federal institutions during the four year
sesquicentennial of the American Civil War.
► The project will utilize Linked Open Data to
find and create connections between
archives and help increase the discovery of
these resources by researchers and the
general public alike.

56. ConflictHistory.com utilizes the Freebase API
and Google Maps Flash to present a dynamic
view of the history of war.

57. CultureSampo: a national deep map
► CultureSampo is a Finnish national
communal publishing conduit for both
institutional memory organizations as well
as private citizens.

58. Finnish Culture on the Semantic
Web

59. Historypin: a community curated
map of the world
► Historypin is a way for millions of people to
come together, from across different
generations, cultures and places, to share
small glimpses of the past and to build up
the huge story of human history.

60. historypin

61. historypin

62. The Megalithic Portal: funded and
run by volunteers
► A community contributed portal with maps
identifying megalithic monuments in the UK,
Europe and the World.

63. The
Megalithic
Portal, UK

64. LookBack Maps:
historic photographs on a map
► A simple, yet robust way of visually
organizing, exploring and engaging in
history and historical photographs through
web and mobile-based maps.
Through the online mapping of high-
resolution public photo collections and
geotagging technology, Lookbackmaps
creates collaborative, standardized views
into the past.

65. LookBack Maps

66. Historic Churches of Great Britain

67. The future of digital collections
► From closed websites to integrated open web
presence
► Approaching digital content differently to the
physical museum: new models,new structures
► Putting digital content where audiences are and
ensuring findability
► Listening to and building collaborative
communities with audiences