Digital heritage

Digital heritage is the use of digital media in the service of preserving cultural or natural heritage.[1][2][3]

The Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage of UNESCO defines digital heritage as embracing
"cultural, educational, scientific and administrative resources, as well as technical, legal, medical and other
kinds of information created digitally, or converted into digital form from existing analogue resources".[4]

The digitalisation of cultural heritage serves to enable the permanent access to art work ranging from
literature to paintings. The main idea is the transformation of a material object into a virtual copy creating
positive and negative implications. There has been several debates concerning the efficiency of the process
of digitising heritage. Some of the drawbacks refer to the deterioration and technological obsolescence due
to the lack of founding for archival materials and underdeveloped policies that would regulate such a
process. Another main social debate, has taken place around the restricted accessibility due to the digital
divide that exists around the world. Nevertheless, new technologies enable easy, instant and cross boarder
access to the digitised work.

- Google created a project launched on February 1st 2011 called GOOGLE ART PROJECT which can be
seen as an example of digitised cultural heritage.

Contents
Virtual heritage
Digital heritage stewardship
See also
References

Virtual heritage
A particular branch of digital heritage, known as "virtual heritage", is formed by the use of information
technology with the aim of recreating the experience of existing cultural heritage, as in (approximations of)
virtual reality.[5]

Digital heritage stewardship

Digital heritage stewardship is a form of digital curation which is modeled after collaborative curation.
Digital heritage stewardship means stepping away from typical curatorial practices (e.g. discovering,
arranging, and sharing information, material, and/or content) in favor of practices which allow its
stakeholders the opportunity to contribute historical, political, and social context and culture. The
collaborative practice encourages the creation, engagement, and maintenance of relationships with the
relative communities from which certain information, material, and/or content originates.[6]
A notable use of digital heritage stewardship is for the preservation of Indigenous heritage. The Plateau
Peoples' Web Portal is an online archive developed and collaborated on by representatives from six different
tribes — the Colville, Coeur d'Alene, Spokane, Umatilla, Yakama, and Warm Springs — along with the
team for Washington State University Libraries' Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections to curate
Plateau peoples' cultural materials.[6]

See also
Digital humanities
Digital archaeology
Archaeogaming

References
1. Yehuda Kalay; Thomas Kvan; Janice Affleck, eds. (2007). New Heritage: New Media and
Cultural Heritage. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-97770-2.
2. Ann Marie Sullivan, Cultural Heritage & New Media: A Future for the Past, 15 J. MARSHALL
REV. INTELL. PROP. L. 604 (2016) https://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1392&context=ripl
3. Fiona Cameron; Sarah Kenderdine, eds. (2007). Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical
Discourse. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-03353-4.
4. "Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage" (http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1
7721&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html). UNESCO. October 15, 2003.
Retrieved July 9, 2015.
5. Ann Marie Sullivan, Cultural Heritage & New Media: A Future for the Past, 15 J. MARSHALL
REV. INTELL. PROP. L. 604 (2016) https://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1392&context=ripl
6. Sayers, Jentery (2018-05-01). The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital
Humanities (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315730479). Routledge.
doi:10.4324/9781315730479 (https://doi.org/10.4324%2F9781315730479). ISBN 978-1-315-
73047-9.

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