Overview

The digitisation of cultural heritage has had a transformative effect both on humanities research and on research and professional practice in the cultural heritage sector, even if the scale and nature of this impact is still at an early stage. As more of the world’s cultural heritage is born-digital, the questions posed by new digital archives and collections will bring complexity and new challenges, but also opportunities and commonality of method and approach across sectors. This book is an accessible starting point for researchers, postgraduate students and cultural heritage professionals interested in the past, present and future of digital cultural heritage. It explores the multiple interpretations, contexts and uses of digital cultural heritage across four core thematic areas: access, use and reuse, value(s) and sustainability. These themes cut across the digitised and the born-digital and are central to the work of the institutions responsible for the management and dissemination of digital cultural heritage and the researchers and practitioners of all kinds who work with those digital materials. Drawing on real case studies, resources and practical examples, this is an essential state-of-the-field overview of the concepts, initiatives, processes and emerging technologies that have shaped digital cultural heritage over the last decades as well as its future challenges and directions.

Full Product Details

9781912250943

Table of Contents

Reviews

This is a vital and timely book, which will orient future research on digital cultural heritage. It determines the multifarious manifestations that it can take, in light not only of the history of digitisation and digital technology, but also the evolving landscape of AI research, development, and regulation. —Ruth Ahnert, Professor of Literary History and Digital Humanities, Queen Mary University of London, UK Exploring Digital Cultural Heritage is an accessible thematic overview bound to inform future research and stimulate global dialogue with its compelling account of the value(s) of access and reuse of heritage in the digital environment. —Brigitte Vézina, Director of Policy and Open Culture, Creative Commons

Author Information

Eirini Goudarouli is the Head of Research at The National Archives, UK, where she leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners. She has led and co-led a range of externally and internally funded projects, programmes and initiatives and holds several external voluntary roles, including serving on the Executive Committee of the Independent Research Organisation Consortium. Her current research focuses on digital cultural heritage, with a particular interest in integrating diverse disciplinary approaches that could essentially contribute to the rethinking of digital, archival and collection-based research. Anna-Maria Sichani is a BRAID Research Fellow and a Research Associate in Digital Humanities at School of Advanced Study, University of London. She has held postdoctoral positions at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex. Previously, she was awarded a UKRI Policy and Engagement Fellowship in Digital Research and Innovation Infrastructure, as well as a Fellowship with the Software Sustainability Institute. She has also collaborated on national and international projects and infrastructures in digital cultural heritage and digital humanities, and has published extensively in these fields. Her research focuses on data-intensive research and emerging technologies, including AI, in the arts, humanities, and the wider cultural heritage and information environment, with a focus towards open, responsible, ethical, and sustainable research, alongside interests in media history, research infrastructures, and digital pedagogy. Jane Winters is Professor of Digital Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK. Her research interests include digital history, born-digital archives (particularly the archived web), digital cultural heritage and open access publishing. She has published most recently on Non-Print Legal Deposit and web archives, born-digital archives and the problem of search, and the archiving and analysis of national web domains.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available