An analysis of productive user contributions in digital media applications for museums and cultural heritage.

In a historical perspective, the relationship between digital media and the museum environment is marked by the role of museums as example use cases for the appli- cation of digital media. Today, this exceptional use as an often technology oriented application has changed and instead digital media have turned into an integral part of mediation strategies in the museum environment. Alongside with this shift not only an increasing professionalization of application development but also a grow- ing demand for new content can be observed. Comparable to its role as the main cost factor in the media industry, the production of content rises to a challenge for museums. In particular small and medium scale european museums with limited funding and an often low level of staff coverage face this new demand and strive therefore for alternative production resources. While productive user contributions can be seen as such an alternative resource, user contributions are at the same time a manifestation for a different mode of in- teracting with content. In contrast to the dominantly passive role of audiences as re- ceivers of information, productive contributions emerge as a mode of content ex- ploration and become in this regard influential for museum mediation strategies. As applications of user contributions in museums and cultural heritage are currently rather seldom, a broader perspective towards user contributions becomes necessary to understand its specific challenges, opportunities and limitations. Productive user contributions can be found in a growing number of applications on the Internet where they either complement or fully substitute corporate content production processes. While the Wikipedia1, an online encyclopedia written entirely by a group of users and open to contributions by all its users, is one of the most prominent examples for this practice, several more applications emerged or are be- ing developed. In consequence user contributions are about to become a powerful source for the production of content in digital media environments.Bis noch vor wenigen Jahren war das Verhältnis zwischen Museen und digitalen Medien durch die Nutzung von Museen als Fallstudien für die Anwendung neuer digitaler Medien geprägt. Im Gegensatz zu dieser frühen experimentellen und stark Technologie-orientierten Nutzung können digitale Medien heute als ein integraler Bestandteil der Vermittlungsstrategien (mediation strategies) im Museum betrachtet werden. Einhergehend mit dieser neuen Rolle kann nicht nur eine zunehmende Professionalisierung der Produktion digitaler Anwendung für den Museumsbereich beobachtet werden sondern auch ein stark wachsender Bedarf nach neuen Inhalten (content). Vergleichbar mit ihrer Rolle in der Medienindustrie stellen neue Inhalte auch im Museumsbereich einen der Hauptkostenfaktoren dar und werden besonders für kleinere und mittlere Museen mit begrenzten finanziellen Mitteln und dünner Per- sonaldecke zu einer zunehmenden Herausforderung. Von Nutzern erstellte Inhalte (user contributions) bieten sich als alternative Ressource für die Produktion von In- halten an. Gleichzeitig reflektiert die Produktion von Inhalten durch Nutzer eine andersartige Form der Auseinandersetzung mit Inhalten wie sie vor allem im Inter- net beobachtet werden kann. Im Gegensatz zum Modell des Zuschauers als pas- sivem Empfängern von Informationen kann die Produktion von Inhalten somit auch als Strategie zur Erschliessung von Themen verstanden werden und zeigt damit neuartige Perspektiven für die Vermittlung von Inhalten im Museum auf. Da der Einsatz derartiger Konzepte im Museumsbereich zur Zeit noch eine relativ geringe Verbreitung geniesst ist es notwendig, eine breitere Perspektive auf die pro- duktive Einbindung von Nutzern zu eröffnen um die besonderen Herausforderun- gen, Potentiale aber auch Einschränkungen ihrer Anwendung herauszuarbeiten

Digital Resources and Tools in Historical Research

One of the characteristic features of modern life is the omnipresence of images - in public life as well as in the private surroundings. At latest with coining the term "Visual history" at the beginning of the nineteen nineties historical disciplines are dealing with this ever growing pool of pictorial sources. This is also true for educational history - especially when keeping in mind that the use of images in an educational context is common practice since early modern ages. This concerns the presentation practices, the design of didactic visual media and their use in educational practice as well as the illustrated traces of historical educational practice and historical educational knowledge (e.g. photographs of school buildings or educational scenes). There are various digital picture archives to address the research questions of many historical disciplines. These databases, though, differ widely in purpose and design - and of course they cannot serve every scientific demand. According to Gerhard Paul there should be at least four layers of information evaluation when analysing historical images (reality of depiction, genesis, use and impact). Thus, building up a corpus of image sources with sufficient accompanying information can be quite challenging. As major topic the Pre-Conference Workshop will focus on the impact of the discipline on developing and maintaining of a picture archive. (DIPF/Orig.

Art in Rich-Prospect: Evaluating Next-Generation User Interfaces for Cultural Heritage

The present study reports on the user experience (UX) of rich-prospect browsing, an emerging interface design trend for digital cultural heritage. Building on research that suggests online museum collections are used only infrequently by the general public, this study investigates the role of next-generation user interfaces in the design of optimal browsing experiences. Moreover, it describes the results of user testing for three different arts and culture collections that make use of rich-prospect. The study recruited 30 participants of varying ages, nationalities, and museum visiting habits to discuss their museum experiences and test three different applications: Coins, Curator Table, and Museum of the World. The results of the study provide insights into the user experience of a new browsing medium and reveal the information-seeking habits and patterns that occurred within these information environments. Moreover, the study isolated the core features of rich-prospect in order to define opportunities and pain points during the browsing experience and indicated which features in particular are most important to people during the browsing experience. Finally, we suggest some best practices going forward in the design of rich-prospect

Casual Leisure in Rich-Prospect: Advancing Visual Information Behavior for Digital Museum Collections

As digital cultural collections become increasingly sophisticated in their scope and functionality, there is a need to build an in-depth understanding concerning the information behaviors of users in this new domain. Research has demonstrated that many digital museum visitors are engaged in casual leisure during exploration of a collection, suggesting that they do not have an inherent information goal but rather seek new experiences or learning opportunities based on personal curiosity and moments of discovery. Consequently, understanding how to translate casual leisure contexts into meaningful interaction design may play a critical role in designing engaging digital collections. Our study reports on the user experience of a largely unexplored user interface design framework called rich-prospect, which was originally developed to enhance browsing and discovery for complex visual collections. We performed a mixed-method, within-subjects study (N=30) that simulated a casual leisure approach to information browsing and retrieval across three different rich-prospect interfaces for digital cultural heritage. Our results show that rich-prospect scores well in the hedonic facets of its user experience, whereas pragmatic aspects have room for improvement. Additionally, through our qualitative analysis of participant feedback, we derived salient themes relating to the exploratory browsing experience. We conclude with a series of design implications to better connect interactive elements with casual leisure contexts for digital cultural collections. © 2021 Owner/Author

From #MuseumAtHome to #AtHomeAtTheMuseum: Digital Museums and Dialogical Engagement beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic

The novel coronavirus spurred a keen interest in digital technologies for museums as both cultural professionals and the public took notice of their uses and limitations throughout the confinement period. In this study, we investigated the use of digital technologies by museums during a period when in-person interaction was not possible. The aim of the study was to better understand the impact of the confinement period on the use of museum technologies in order to identify implications for future museum experience design. We compared museums across four countries – France, Japan, Luxembourg, and the United States – by conducting an international survey in three languages on the use of digital technologies during the early phase of the pandemic. Additionally, we analyzed the Facebook activity of museums in each country and conducted a series of interviews with digital museology professionals in academia and the private sector. We found that despite a flurry of online activities, especially during the early phase of the pandemic, museums confronted a number of internal and external challenges that were often incongruent with their ability to offer new forms of digital engagement. In general, digital solutions served only as a temporary substitute for the museum experience rather than as an opportunity to usher in a new digital paradigm for cultural mediation, and many cultural professionals cited a lack of digital training as a limiting factor in robust ICT implementation. We also argue that the most successful digital engagement came from those activities that promoted a sense of community or an invitation for self-expression by visitors. We conclude with a framework that describes a ‘virtuous circle of museum participation’, aiming to support public engagement with museums through the development of content that builds on the interconnectedness of on-site and online interactivity

Network Analysis Between Distant Reading and Close Reading

The advent of “distant reading” methods has created the opportunity to look at texts in a new way. But with the shift from close to distant reading, there is also a danger of loosing sight of fine-grained text structure. Like any method, distant reading methodology is not theoretically neutral, but carries a bundle of presuppositions. In this paper, a new method of text network analysis is proposed as a bridge between close and distant reading. Network analysis as a methodological basis offers two advantages: Firstly, it links methodology to theoretical perspectives that highlight relational aspects of linguistic, historical and social phenomena. Secondly, it allows humanities scholars to participate in the interdisciplinary field of network research and to benefit from available methods and tools. The proposed methodology of text-based network generation links close and distant reading in two ways. By building on syntactical structures, the networks resemble closely the linguistic structure of text. And by linking network data and text passages, the method allows to go back and forth between a distant view of the textand its close reading. The method is discussed using Novalis’ essay from 1799 “Die Christenheit oder Europa” as an example

Historical Newspaper Content Mining: Revisiting the impresso Project's Challenges in Text and Image Processing, Design and Historical Scholarship

impresso. Media Monitoring of the Past is an interdisciplinary research project in which a team of computational linguists, designers and historians collaborate on the datafication of a multilingual corpus of digitised historical newspapers. The primary goals of the project are to improve text mining tools for historical text, to enrich historical newspapers with (semi-) automatically generated data and to integrate such data into historical research workflows by means of a newly developed user interface. In this paper we discuss our efforts to overcome inherent challenges and to integrate text mining and data visualisation applications in general historical research practices which are characterised by search operations as well as the need to create topical collections

Report on C²DH Activities in Support of the Ukrainian Research Community

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24th 2022 has triggered a worldwide wave of support and expressions of solidarity, also among C²DH staff. This report gives an overview of their past activities together with a preliminary review and recommendations for the year 2023. This does not cover private support activities undertaken by C²DH members. This report consists of three parts: First, a brief summary of the response of Luxembourgish research institutions, published already in June 2022. Second, a chronology of activities by C²DH staff since March 2022. Third, an overview of past and planned activities by C²DH. These activities we group in a) Collaboration and Training in support of Ukrainian researchers and b) Documentation and Preservation with a focus on cultural heritage and future research activities. At the time of writing, most do not expect the war to end any time soon. This makes it necessary to revisit past support activities regarding their success and effectiveness, to adjust measures according to the changed situation and to identify new opportunities for support also in light of their impact on the centre and its ongoing activities in research and teaching. Overall, the centre will continue and expand its support activities in light of the orientation towards the development of the future Ukrainian research landscape

EU-wide exposure data of 11 chemical substance groups from the HBM4EU Aligned Studies (2014–2021)

Funding Information: The authors would like to thank everybody who contributed to the HBM4EU Aligned Studies: the participating children, teenagers, adults and their families, the fieldworkers that collected the samples and database managers that made the information available to HBM4EU, the HBM4EU project partners, especially those from WP7 for developing all materials supporting the fieldwork, WP9 for organizing the QA/QC scheme under HBM4EU and all laboratories who performed the analytical measurements. We would like to acknowledge Sun Kyoung Jung from the National Institute of Environmental Research of South-Korea for providing the KoNEHS Cycle III results (crt adjusted). HBM4EU is co-financed under Horizon 2020 (grant agreement No 733032). The authors thank all principal investigators of the contributing studies for their participation and contribution to the HBM4EU Aligned Studies and the national program owners for their financial support. Further details on funding for all the participating studies can be found in the Supplemental Material, Table S12.As one of the core elements of the European Human Biomonitoring Initiative (HBM4EU) a human biomonitoring (HBM) survey was conducted in 23 countries to generate EU-wide comparable HBM data. This survey has built on existing HBM capacity in Europe by aligning national or regional HBM studies, referred to as the HBM4EU Aligned Studies. The HBM4EU Aligned Studies included a total of 10,795 participants of three age groups: (i) 3,576 children aged 6–12 years, (ii) 3,117 teenagers aged 12–18 years and (iii) 4,102 young adults aged 20–39 years. The participants were recruited between 2014 and 2021 in 11–12 countries per age group, geographically distributed across Europe. Depending on the age group, internal exposure to phthalates and the substitute DINCH, halogenated and organophosphorus flame retardants, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), cadmium, bisphenols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), arsenic species, acrylamide, mycotoxins (deoxynivalenol (total DON)), benzophenones and selected pesticides was assessed by measuring substance specific biomarkers subjected to stringent quality control programs for chemical analysis. For substance groups analyzed in different age groups higher average exposure levels were observed in the youngest age group, i.e., phthalates/DINCH in children versus teenagers, acrylamide and pesticides in children versus adults, benzophenones in teenagers versus adults. Many biomarkers in teenagers and adults varied significantly according to educational attainment, with higher exposure levels of bisphenols, phthalates, benzophenones, PAHs and acrylamide in participants (from households) with lower educational attainment, while teenagers from households with higher educational attainment have higher exposure levels for PFASs and arsenic. In children, a social gradient was only observed for the non-specific pyrethroid metabolite 3-PBA and di-isodecyl phthalate (DiDP), with higher levels in children from households with higher educational attainment. Geographical variations were seen for all exposure biomarkers. For 15 biomarkers, the available health-based HBM guidance values were exceeded with highest exceedance rates for toxicologically relevant arsenic in teenagers (40%), 3-PBA in children (36%), and between 11 and 14% for total DON, Σ (PFOA + PFNA + PFHxS + PFOS), bisphenol S and cadmium. The infrastructure and harmonized approach succeeded in obtaining comparable European wide internal exposure data for a prioritized set of 11 chemical groups. These data serve as a reference for comparison at the global level, provide a baseline to compare the efficacy of the European Commission's chemical strategy for sustainability and will give leverage to national policy makers for the implementation of targeted measures.publishersversionpublishe