Cultural Heritage Digital Libraries: Needs and Components
Gregory Crane
European Conference on Digital Libraries, 2002
Page 626
Summary: This paper describes preliminary conclusions from a long-term study of
cultural heritage digital collections. First, those features most important to cultural
heritage digital libraries are described. Second, the author lists those components that
have proven most useful in boot-strapping new collections. The goal is to create an
unwieldy set of heterogeneous, in some ways incommensurable, collections that appealed
to wide-spread, complex audiences with disparate, often competing interests. The paper
highlights important issues such as persistence of historical data, access to cultural
heritage being a right not a privilege, serving the needs of diverse audience, digital
objects and their components being freely reusable and finally standards being
descriptive than prescriptive. The author then gives a collection overview of the Perseus
project. The author states that the rise of the Web and, of the Open Archives Initiative has
radically changed the information environment and that if they were to begin the Perseus
project now they would not follow the same strategy. Since digital cameras now allow
novices to produce images, a full time photographer is no longer needed. 2D and 3D
models: According to the author any mature digital library must develop a strategy to
integrate 2D and 3D spatial data with textual and other materials: digital libraries provide
a space in which user can theoretically move back and forth between virtual spaces,
textual sources and quantitative data. Improved accuracy of GPS data and the ubiquitous
availability of handheld devices open up immense new possibilities for collaborative
collection of point data. Dictionary is seen as a crucial starting point in a digital collection
featuring a new language. Also inclusion of encyclopedias is seen as crucial for a
developing digital library. This document has described some of the requirements and
possible components that were found to be important to cultural heritage collections.
Further Study or Techniques that benefit other projects: In this paper the author has
stressed those features that seemed most distinctive but has also suggested that the
particular needs of cultural heritage collections only anticipate issues that other
disciplines may confront as their usage of digital libraries increases. In the foreign
language scenario, the author seeks to track semantics, syntax, grammar, and references
to particular people and things. By attacking the harder foreign language problem the
paper lays the foundation for a service that supports reading in the scientific and medical
areas as well.