Cultural Heritage Informatics, Old Idea or Emerging Domain?

Stumbling into a Shared Definition for Research and Teaching

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/cais1975

Abstract

This is a 90-minute roundtable discussion, moderated by Shirin G. Alamdari. With Hannah Turner (UBC); Stacy Allison-Cassin (Dalhousie), Isto Huvila (UU), Andrea Thomer (UArizona) and Diana Marsh (UMD Maryland). The term, Cultural Heritage Informatics, is being used widely in Information fields and by Information Studies Scholars and programs. This panel will address the questions: What is Cultural Heritage Informatics? Why do researchers and institutions stumble with a definition? Does Cultural Heritage Informatics define a methodology, a subject interest, or a set of technical practices? What kinds of ethical considerations could we,
or should we, have?

References

Allison-Cassin, Stacy. 2020. “Bodies, Brains, and Machines: An Exploration of the Relationship

between the Material and Affective States of Librarians and Information Systems.” Library

Trends 68 (3): 409–30.

Allison-Cassin, Stacy, and Camille Callison. 2023. “The Respectful Terminologies Platform

Project and Envisioning Indigenous Governance,” June.

https://DalSpace.library.dal.ca//handle/10222/83247.

Allison-Cassin, Stacy, and Dean Seeman. 2022. “Metadata as Knowledge.” KULA: Knowledge

Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 6 (3): 1–4.

https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.244.

Bell, Joshua A., Kimberly Christen, and Mark Turin. 2013. “Introduction: After the Return.”

Museum Anthropology Review 7 (1–2): 1–21.

Benardou, Agiatis, Panos Constantopoulos, Costis Dallas, and Dimitris Gavrilis. 2010.

“Understanding the Information Requirements of Arts and Humanities Scholarship.”

International Journal of Digital Curation 5 (1): 18–33. https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v5i1.141.

Brown, Deidre, and George Nicholas. 2012. “Protecting Indigenous Cultural Property in the Age

of Digital Democracy: Institutional and Communal Responses to Canadian First Nations and

Māori Heritage Concerns.” Journal of Material Culture 17 (3): 307–24.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183512454065.

Buckland, Michael K. 1991. “Information as Thing.” Journal of the American Society for

Information Science (1986-1998) 42 (5): 351.

Cameron, Fiona. 2007. “Beyond the Cult of the Replicant: Museums and Historical Digital

Objects–Traditional Concerns, New Discourses.” Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A

Critical Discourse, 49–75.

Cameron, Fiona, and Sarah Kenderdine. 2007. Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical

Discourse (Media in Transition). The MIT Press.

“CARE Principles — Global Indigenous Data Alliance.” n.d. Accessed February 2, 2024.

https://www.gida-global.org/care.Carroll, Stephanie Russo, Ibrahim Garba, Oscar L. Figueroa-Rodríguez, Jarita Holbrook,

Raymond Lovett, Simeon Materechera, Mark Parsons, et al. 2020. “The CARE Principles for

Indigenous Data Governance.” Data Science Journal 19 (1). https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-

043.

Christen, Kimberly, Alex Merrill, and Michael Wynne. 2017. “A Community of Relations:

Mukurtu Hubs and Spokes.” D-Lib Magazine 23 (5/6). https://doi.org/10.1045/may2017-

christen.

Fenlon, Katrina, Alia Reza, Jessica Grimmer, and Travis Wagner. 2023. “Mutual Sustainability

among Communities and Their Knowledge Infrastructures.” Proceedings of the Association

for Information Science and Technology 60 (1): 133–44. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.775.

Harrison, Rodney, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf, Sharon Macdonald, Nadia Bartolini,

Esther Breithoff, Harald Fredheim, et al. 2020. Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to

Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices. London, UK: UCL Press.

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13xps9m.

Hennessy, Kate. 2009. “Virtual Repatriation and Digital Cultural Heritage: The Ethics of

Managing Online Collections.” Anthropology News 50 (4): 5–6.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1556-3502.2009.50405.x.

Hou, Yumeng, Sarah Kenderdine, Davide Picca, Mattia Egloff, and Alessandro Adamou. 2022.

“Digitizing Intangible Cultural Heritage Embodied: State of the Art.” Journal on Computing

and Cultural Heritage 15 (3): 55:1-55:20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3494837.

Huvila, Isto. 2013. “How a Museum Knows? Structures, Work Roles, and Infrastructures of

Information Work.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

64 (7): 1375–87. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22852.

Huvila, Isto, Lisa Börjesson, and Olle Sköld. 2022. “Archaeological Information-Making

Activities According to Field Reports.” Library & Information Science Research 44 (3):

101171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2022.101171.

Kawooya, Dick, and Tucky Taylor. 2014. “Cultural Heritage Informatics and Intellectual

Property Rights.” Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics.Krmpotich, Cara, and Alexander Somerville. 2016. “Affective Presence: The Metonymical

Catalogue.” Museum Anthropology 39 (2): 178–91. Kukutai, Tahu, and John Taylor. 2016. Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda. ANU

Press.

Latham, K. F. 2012. “Museum Object as Document: Using Buckland’s Information Concepts to

Understand Museum Experiences.” Journal of Documentation 68 (1): 45–71.

Marsh, Diana E. 2022. “Digital Knowledge Sharing: Perspectives on Use, Impacts, Risks, and

Best Practices According to Native American and Indigenous Community-Based

Researchers.” Archival Science, January. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-021-09378-9.

Marty, Paul F. 1999. “Museum Informatics and Collaborative Technologies: The Emerging

Socio-Technological Dimension of Information Science in Museum Environments.” Journal

of the American Society for Information Science 50 (12): 1083–91.

https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(1999)50:12<1083::AID-ASI7>3.0.CO;2-B.

———. 2000. “Museum Informatics: Sociotechnical Information Infrastructures in Museums.”

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 26 (3): 22–24.

https://doi.org/10.1002/bult.156.

———. 2008. Museum Informatics : People, Information, and Technology in Museums. 2008.

New York: Routledge.

Marty, Paul F., and Michael B. Twidale. 2011. “Museum Informatics Across the Curriculum:

Ten Years of Preparing LIS Students for Careers Transcending Libraries, Archives, and

Museums.” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 52 (1): 9–22.

Modrow, Sebastian, and Tyler Youngman. 2023a. “Theorizing Cultural Heritage Informatics as

the Intersection of Heritage, Memory, and Information.” Proceedings of the Association for

Information Science and Technology 60 (1): 666–71. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.836.

Parry, Ross. 2007. Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change.

London; New York: Routledge.

———. 2010. Museums in a Digital Age. London: Routledge.

Research Data Alliance International Indigenous Data Sovereignty Interest Group (RDA IG).

2019. “CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.” The Glocal Indigenous Data

Alliance. http://www.GIDA-global.org/care (accessed January 9, 2023).

Sorensen, Amanda H., Samantha Lee, Diana E. Marsh, Katrina Fenlon, and Ricardo L. Punzalan.

2023. “Reviving Anthropology’s Past: Digital Archival Access and Ethical Collaboration with

Indigenous Communities.” Anthropology Today 39 (6): 11–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-

8322.12847.

Szekely, Pedro, Craig A. Knoblock, Fengyu Yang, Eleanor E. Fink, Shubham Gupta, Rachel

Allen, and Georgina Goodlander. 2014. “Publishing the Data of the Smithsonian American

Art Museum to the Linked Data Cloud.” International Journal of Humanities and Arts

Computing 8 (supplement): 152–66. https://doi.org/10.3366/ijhac.2014.0104.

Thomer, Andrea K., Dharma Akmon, Jeremy J. York, Allison R. B. Tyler, Faye Polasek, Sara

Lafia, Libby Hemphill, and Elizabeth Yakel. 2022. “The Craft and Coordination of Data

Curation: Complicating Workflow Views of Data Science.” Proceedings of the ACM on

Human-Computer Interaction 6 (CSCW2): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555139.

Turner, Hannah. 2017. “Organizing Knowledge in Museums: A Review of Concepts and

Concerns.” Knowledge Organization 44 (7).

———. 2020. Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation.

University of British Columbia Press.

van Hooland, Seth, and Ruben Verborgh. 2014. Linked Data for Libraries, Archives and

Museums: How to Clean, Link and Publish Your Metadata. Facet Publishing.

Were, Graeme. 2014. “Digital Heritage, Knowledge Networks, and Source Communities:

Understanding Digital Objects in a Melanesian Society.” Museum Anthropology 37 (2): 133–

43. https://doi.org/10.1111/muan.12058.

Wilkinson, Mark D., Michel Dumontier, IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Gabrielle Appleton, Myles

Axton, Arie Baak, Niklas Blomberg, et al. 2016. “The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific

Data Management and Stewardship.” Scientific Data 3 (1): 160018.

https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18

Downloads

Published

2025-02-07

How to Cite

Turner, H., Alamdar, S. G., Allison-Cassin, S., Huvila, I., Marsh, D., & Thomer , A. (2025). Cultural Heritage Informatics, Old Idea or Emerging Domain? Stumbling into a Shared Definition for Research and Teaching. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS Actes Du congrès Annuel De l’ACSI. https://doi.org/10.29173/cais1975

Issue

Section

Panels