Personal Digital Collections: Involving Users in the Co-Creation of Digital Cultural Heritage

Background

Revolutionary trends in personalization have occurred in the online museum environment over the past two decades (Beardon & Worden, 1995; Bowen & Filippini Fantoni, 2004). As museums and other cultural heritage organizations explore new methods of making their collections available online, the focus has shifted from providing information about objects to providing visitors with new opportunities for interactivity. Many museums now encourage their visitors to draw connections between cultural artifacts, and share those connections with other museum visitors (Bearman & Trant, 2005; Dietz et al., 2004; cf. Borgman, 2003). Online visitors are encouraged to add value to digital collections of cultural heritage, contributing their knowledge to the museum’s collections by adding new connections and interpretations across user communities (cf. Lynch, 2002).

The popularity of such activities has raised a variety of questions about the consequences of allowing users to create and manipulate personal digital collections of cultural heritage. Some researchers have focused on the educational potential of allowing museum visitors to act as curators and design their own online collections and exhibits (Adams et al., 2001). Others have attempted to assess the effectiveness of these tools by examining the ability of personal digital collections to encourage museum visitors to feel more involved with or connected to digital cultural heritage (Filippini Fantoni & Bowen, 2007). This section addresses these and related research questions, providing an overview of the key findings from the literature on this topic.