Digital is a tool, medium and space for heritage. If you work to promote heritage-based content and create records for posterity, please take our user engagement survey! This questionnaire consists of ten multiple-choice questions and only takes seven minutes to complete.
The exponentially expanding volume of digital content and information makes managing it increasingly difficult and overwhelming for heritage professionals concerned with digital heritage. Despite an ever-present risk of digital memory loss, the inevitable conclusion is that it’s impossible – although sometimes tempting to try – to preserve everything.
How do we choose which digital heritage to collect, conserve and curate? How do we understand which digital heritage projects should take precedence when the work seems never-ending? How do we prioritize the needs of users when access has seemingly infinite potential but attention is limited? A human-centred design is needed to unravel these dilemmas, which lie at the heart of digital heritage work.
A user group shares similar characteristics (such as age, education, occupation or community role) and motivations for getting involved in activities held by cultural institutions. Digital heritage professionals must understand these needs and expectations to target specific user groups and make better use of resources to deliver value.
Sustaining Digital Heritage (SDH), ICCROM’s newest programme, seeks to collect and disseminate strategies and tools for the preservation and creative use of digital heritage. The SDH team has prepared a questionnaire to examine how cultural institutions identify and engage their user groups with digital heritage.
The survey results will be crucial in the SDH team’s identification of opportunities for future materials and initiatives that address operational gaps and areas for improvement related to user engagement strategies. The results will also be summarized and made available to the public on the ICCROM website.
The deadline to complete the survey has been extended to 31 August 2023.