The need to preserve and remember the past is a particular human trait. The richness
of our cultural history is approached by a vast array of disciplines, that investigate and
manage it. However, their effectiveness can be hindered by several technical issues. One
of the concerns of experts in this area is the way the importance of cultural heritage is
communicated in order to cultivate interest, curiosity and respect. Another concern is
the lack of suitable tools that can handle the dimension and complexity of the collections
with which they interact.
With the emergence of digital tools and the creation of online repositories for the collections
of cultural institutions, it is possible to suggest different solutions to tackle these
problems. The proposed solution aims to facilitate access and interaction with cultural
information, through the implementation of an application capable of integrating multiple
forms of representation of historical artifacts. The application tackles two problems
that arise from distinct goals. One is the need to represent, in a single view, collections of
related items from different repositories. The other is how to, effectively, communicate
the information associated with an artifact and its context.
This MSc dissertation is part of a collaborative effort between NOVA LINCS researchers
and several archaeological institutions of the Iberian Extremadura, aiming to develop
tools that will support research and help sharing the cultural wealth of archaeological
sites and artifacts from the region. In this dissertation, the developed application covers a
general view of the aforementioned problems, while being flexible to the customization of
the representation of cultural data. The solution was evaluated on usability and effectiveness
on reaching the proposed goals, during a process that involved target audience users
and experts in the area of culture and history, as well as human-computer interaction.
The results provided positive conclusions
