Session 5. Digital Cultural Heritage and Public Engagement

Date: Thursday, November 1, 2018, 16h00 (UK time)

Session coordinator: Elisa Bonacini (University of South Florida), Emma Bridges (University of London), Humphrey Southall (Portsmouth)

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/UrYKFXpY8Pc

Slides:

Outline

• What do we mean by public engagement?
• Crowdsourcing as a form of engagement
• Wikipedia in relation to engagement/crowdsourcing and democratising knowledge. Why experts, students, and academics should get involved
• Some problems with representation on Wikipedia
• Case study: #WCCWiki
• Case study: GB1900
• Case study: #iziTravel

Required reading

• Littlejohn, A., & Hood, N. (2018). Becoming an Online Editor: Perceived Roles and Responsibilities of Wikipedia Editors. Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, 23(1), n1. Available: http://www.informationr.net/ir/23-1/paper784.html
• Bonacini, E. (2018). Digital heritage dissemination and the participatory storytelling project #iziTRAVELSicilia: the case of the Archaeological Museum of Syracuse (Italy). Available: https://acta.imeko.org/index.php/acta-imeko/article/view/IMEKO-ACTA-07%20%282018%29-03-07/pdf_1

Further reading

• Bakhshi, H. and Throsby, D. 2012. ‘New technologies in cultural institutions: theory, evidence and policy implications’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 205-222. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233049874_New_technologies_in_cultural_institutions_Theory_evidence_and_policy_implications
• Ciasullo, M.V., Gaeta, A., Gaeta, M. and Monetta, G. 2016. [Online]. ‘New modalities for enhancing cultural heritage experience. The enabling role of digital technologies’, in Sinergie Italian Journal of Management, Vol. 34, No. 99, pp. 119-138. Available at: http://sinergie.kaleidoscope.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/1207-1912-1-PB.pdf
• Liew, C. L. 2014. [Online] ‘Participatory Cultural Heritage: A Tale of Two Institutions' Use of Social Media’. D-lib magazine, Vol. 20, No. 3-4 Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march14/liew/03liew.print.html
• Oomen, J. and Aroyo, L. 2011. [Online]. ‘Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Heritage Domain: Opportunities and Challenges’, in Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies in Brisbane, 29 June-2 July, QUT, Brisbane, pp. 137-149. Available at http://www.iisi.de/fileadmin/IISI/upload/2011/p138_oomen.pdf
• A useful blogpost talking through some of the methods of analysing Wikipedia editor surveys, particularly in relation to gender: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/04/30/how-many-women-edit-wikipedia
• Wikidata Human Gender Indicators : http://whgi.wmflabs.org/gender-by-language.html
• The WCC project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Women%27s_Classical_Committee/Tools_and_guides

Exercise

Following the guidelines in the WCC page (see Further reading), create a new wikipedia entry or modify an existing one. Please, bear in mind Wikipedia criteria of relevance, original content, and conflict of interest.