De Niet, M

Dobreva, M

Economou, M

Galani, A

Ruthven, I

UCL Discovery

JOCCH1201-1e ACMJATS Trim: 8.5 X 11 in February 1, 2019 20:81eEditorial Note for Special Issue on the Evaluation 1of Digital Cultural Resources—January 2019 23Digital technologies have a significant impact on all areas of operation of cultural heritage organisations, from 4documenting, interpreting, and exhibiting the collections to communicating and interacting with diverse au- 5dience groups. As the cultural heritage sector is gaining substantial experience in communicating collections 6information in multiple digital forms—whether an online catalogue, virtual exhibition, mobile app, museum in- 7teractive, or social media exchange—the focus of both practitioners and researchers working in this area has 8started shifting to user engagement, which increasingly affects cultural encounters and shapes users’ percep- 9tion of cultural organisations. Cultural and educational institutions around the world are heavily investing into 10digitisation and the development and use of various digital tools to make their collections accessible both online 11and onsite. Yet, we still know relatively little about who uses these digital collections and applications, how they 12interact with the associated data, how they value these cultural services, and what the impacts of these digital 13resources are, both on the users and the organisations themselves. 14This special issue seeks to address this gap by bringing together specialists from a range of disciplines, prac- 15tices, and sectors (such as digital heritage, museology, information studies, human-computer interaction, and 16digital humanities) to discuss the latest developments on evaluating the use of digital cultural resources. It looks 17at the latest research and critical thinking in the evaluation of digital cultural heritage, covering a wide range 18of applications from mobile apps and serious games to online catalogues and textual digital editions; engaging 19with cultural heritage and audiences of diverse type and size in an international context; and integrating various 20theoretical approaches and methodological tools. Apart from innovative research, the issue includes also crit- 21ical reflections about the potential and shortcomings of evaluation research in digital cultural heritage and its 22impact upon professional practices, policies, and strategies of not only cultural organizations but also research, 23governing, and funding bodies. 24The idea for this special issue arose from the activities of the Scottish Network on Digital Cultural Resources 25Evaluation (ScotDigiCH), funded by The Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2015–2016, and particularly from the 26discussions and papers presented at the International Symposium on Evaluating Digital Cultural Resources 27(EDCR2016) which took place in Glasgow in December 2016. ScotDigiCH is coordinated by Information Studies 28at the University of Glasgow in collaboration with The Hunterian at the University of Glasgow, Glasgow Life 29Museums, the Moving Image Archive of the National Library of Scotland, and the Department of Computer and 30Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde. Although the idea for this focused issue arose from the 31work of ScotDigiCH (and includes two articles initially presented at EDCR2016), we wanted to open it up further 32and invited submissions through an open Call for Papers from researchers and cultural heritage practitioners 33working in this area from around the world. Five of the over 50 articles submitted in response to the call were 34accepted and complete the issue, which comprises a total of seven articles. 35We are very grateful to both the previous and current Editor-in-Chief of JOCCH (Roberto Scopigno from 36ISTI–CNR, Pisa, and Franco Niccolucci from VAST-LAB at PIN, University of Florence, respectively), and to the 37© 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).1556-4673/2019/02-ART1ehttps://doi.org/10.1145/3307313ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, Vol. 12, No. 1, Article 1e. Publication date: February 2019.JOCCH1201-1e ACMJATS Trim: 8.5 X 11 in February 1, 2019 20:81e:2 • M. Economou et al.Associate Editor and Information Director Karina Rodriguez-Echavarria from the University of Brighton, for38welcoming our proposal and tirelessly supporting all work on the issue. We also thank the international pool of39reviewers who honoured us with the time and effort they put into reviewing the papers and for contributing to40their improvement.41The high number and diversity of submissions we received to our call is an indication of the growing impor-42tance of evaluation work in digital heritage. It is also a recognition that this special issue fills a gap by bringing43to the fore considerations and factors that affect both digital cultural heritage practitioners and researchers. The44quality of the articles we received was, in most cases, also very high. In our selection for this special issue, the45focus was on articles that did not just present a specific digital system/game/platform but went beyond that to46critically analyse in sufficient depth or breadth how this was used and valued by users; to address the issues that47the evaluation raised; and/or to demonstrate that they were innovative in their methodological or theoretical48approaches. Overall, we favoured articles that framed the cases studied in a broader context, so as to enable49practitioners and researchers in the field to draw comparable or wider lessons.50The first article [Franzini et al.] compares users’ needs and expectations from digital editions of texts with51what is actually built and provided in these resources by the digital humanities community.52The second article [Gil and Economou] studies the online presentation of museums’ collections information53over a 10-year period (which is unusual for the digital cultural heritage field, where longitudinal studies are rare)54and uses a constructivist theoretical framework to examine their philosophy of communication.55The third article [Damala et al.] proposes a flexible evaluation framework for the design and use of any kind56of digital application in a museum setting, which includes the perspectives of not only museum visitors but57also cultural heritage professionals and institutions, and it highlights the key areas that need to be carefully58examined.59The fourth article [Pujol] evaluates how archaeological virtual environments convey to users the feeling of60travelling to the past. It particularly examines the design elements that constitute a VR-mediated experience and61the role of reconstructions and visual realism in achieving a feeling of Cultural Presence.62The fifth article [Raptis et al.] uses cognitive-style theory to evaluate how the design of cultural heritage seri-63ous games affects the players’ visual and game-play behaviour and knowledge acquisition. The article examines64these factors in relation to visual search tasks and illuminates the importance of considering users’ cognitive65characteristics in both the design and evaluation of digital cultural heritage applications.66The sixth article [Jones et al.] presents the qualitative evaluation of a location-aware mobile cultural heritage67game designed to stimulate reflection about the city of Luxembourg’s history; it further critically examines the68role of evaluation (undertaken at a formative stage) in the app’s design.69The seventh article [Galani and Kidd] analyses the evaluation of twomobile apps used outdoors andmakes the70case for reflexivity in digital heritage evaluation practices. The article reflects more broadly on the methodologi-71cal and ethical issues related to digital cultural evaluation and the limitations arising from the narrow application72of task-oriented evaluation frameworks.73The collection of current trends and approaches in digital cultural heritage evaluation included in the is-74sue clearly highlights the strong interdisciplinary nature of this area of evaluation work, which draws from a75range of fields to inform both theoretical and methodological approaches. It also shows the need to develop76diverse strategies depending on the stage of evaluation (front-end, formative, or summative), type of digital77resource, targeted users, and organisational context. At the same time, some common challenges and issues78emerged from across all the articles. These advocate the importance of close collaboration among researchers,79practitioners, cultural heritage organisations, and their user groups. They also highlight the need for more re-80flection, robustness, honesty, and sharing of both positive and negative outcomes that evaluation might bring81out.82ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, Vol. 12, No. 1, Article 1e. Publication date: February 2019.JOCCH1201-1e ACMJATS Trim: 8.5 X 11 in February 1, 2019 20:8Editorial Note for Special Issue on the Evaluation of Digital Cultural Resources—January 2019 • 1e:3This dialogue and exchange of ideas, which started with the ScotDigiCH network and continues with this 83special issue, shows that an international community of practice and research is being built in this area with the 84capacity and desire to produce significant work that promises to lead to more fruitful experimentation in the 85future. 86Maria Economou 87University of Glasgow 88Ian Ruthven 89University of Strathclyde 90Areti Galani 91Newcastle University 92Milena Dobreva 93UCL Qatar 94Marco de Niet 95Leiden University Libraries 96Guest Editors 97ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, Vol. 12, No. 1, Article 1e. Publication date: February 2019.

Editorial Note for Special Issue on the Evaluation of Digital Cultural Resources — January 2019

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Editorial Note for Special Issue on the Evaluation of Digital Cultural Resources — January 2019

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