Heritage 2.0
Heritage 2.0 is an IBBT funded project in collaboration with the most important players in the Flemish cultural sector.
‘Heritage 2.0’ is performing research into a social, interactive, location-based heritage experience via mobile and iDTV devices within a network of heritage sites.
An often heard critique on the use of ICT in a heritage context concerns the individualised nature of the experience. The innovative aspect of this project lies therefore in the focus on social interaction within a cultural experience.
The objective is to link that component of social interaction – universally deemed invaluable for a rewarding physical heritage experience – to a digital environment. Group communication can encourage participants to interact with one another and to stimulate each other.
Another important aspect of Heritage 2.0 is the blending in of the virtual with the real. Following the ‘virtuous circle’-principle, the project aims to enrich the visitor’s experience, both during the real visit as during the pre or post trajectory.
One of the key topics of the projects is on the interoperability of heritage information and the implications for current and future (meta)data models. Heritage 2.0 will also study how the introduction of a more active type of heritage participant will affect heritage data structures. Necessary adaptations will have to be made to the data tier enabling to unlock heritage information in a differentiated and customised manner. The design of a standard compliant (meta)data model will facilitate the data exchange between heritage institutions and general public. A demonstrator will prove the concepts used in the model.
The first technical challenge is to develop a metadata- and data exchange model for the Flemish heritage sector, starting from existing (heritage) standards and with inclusion of existing best practices in social software applications and their bottom-up data description. It constitutes the foundation for a new form of heritage experience (concerning content-combination) and is situated on the level of federated digital repositories and metadata structures. It wants to synthesise the top-down driven taxonomy model and the bottom-up model (folksonomies) used by social software ‘Web 2.0’-applications.
On the one hand the model needs to allow Flemish heritage databases to be linked to one other and to internet applications. On the other hand heritage databases need to be able to contain (besides expert data) data introduced by the cultural participants themselves.
A second technical challenge is to do research on the required network technology to pass location-based information within the specific context of Flemish heritage-sites. It includes a study on the most important network technologies en their configuration for the opening up of historical heritage locations. The stipulation of the most optimal network configuration is not obvious because of the sometimes exceptional conditions on the sites (big concrete walls, old buildings, …). Because there is no square and ready solution for localisation methods, a demonstrator-platform will be developed for the collection of relevant location-based user data.
A third technical challenge is the development of a generic system for the automatic generation of context and visitor related data and for the transformation of these data into appropriate contents and interfaces tailored to specific user profiles. This research must lead to ‘individual adaptable’ interfaces, created on-the-fly ‘during use’. This individual interface must also fit in a group concept where multiple visitors can in some way be linked together and where social interactions play a significant role. The challenge consists in supporting the whole visitor-process in an optimal manner.