From shoeboxes to shared spaces: participatory cultural heritage via digital platforms

ABSTRACT

Moves towards a post-custodial, participatory paradigm have been well-documented in the cultural heritage sector. The capacity for individuals to contribute to community archives is significant, given their emphasis on representing the experiences of those hidden, ignored, underrepresented or misrepresented by mainstream cultural heritage institutions. Digital platforms offer affordances that can be utilised to encourage the collecting, curating and sharing of collective memories. While there are analyses of individual projects in using technologies for these aims, collective analyses of such practices remain scant in the scholarly literature. This research examines a purposefully selected sample of projects that feature participatory cultural heritage practices and offers a collective analysis of their objectives and motivations, the varying levels of engagement, the technology-mediated participatory activities supported, and how the projects are resourced and sustained. The findings indicate that the enabling of participation through digital platforms vary in nature, depth and extent, and a spectrum approach can be a useful way of conceptualising and envisaging the various levels of engagement in participatory cultural heritage. The collective analysis shows that when projects are designed with a human-centred computing focus and a community-oriented foundation, there is evidence of deeper engagement and sustained participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Community archive
• community-focused cultural memory
• digital platforms
• participatory cultural heritage
• participation spectrum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Victoria University of Wellington, FCA Grant: [Grant Number 220764].

Notes on contributors

Chern Li Liew

Chern Li Liew is an Associate Professor at the School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research interests are in the areas of digital cultural heritage, documentary heritage management, digital curation, sociocultural informatics and, the social studies of information and communications technology. She has published in Information, Communication & Society, Online Information Review, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Aslib Journal of Information Management, Library and Information Science Research and Journal of Documentation. Email: C[email protected]

Anne Goulding

Professor Anne Goulding is Professor of Library and Information Management at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research interest lie primarily in the area of the management of galleries, libraries, archives, museums and records institutions with a particular focus on methods of evaluating the impact of services, activities and programmes. She is Editor in Chief of The Journal of Librarianship and Information Science.

Max Nichol

Max Nichol graduated from Victoria University of Wellington with a Master's of Arts in History. His research interests include the history of New Zealand in the nineteenth century and late twentieth century, and the history of the media. He is interested in how the relationship between information management, collections management and history affects the way history is accessed, produced and understood.