Datafication and Cultural Heritage: Critical Perspectives on Exhibition and Collection Practices

Abstract

The increasing digitization and the emergence of new data-sharing practices change our understanding of how cultural heritage is defined, collected, and exhibited. We must pay particular attention to the ways in which digital interfaces curate history. Crowdsourcing, social media, linked open data, and other open science practices challenge the current practices of cultural heritage institutions, owing to the established structures between and within them and the character of the networked publics involved. However, such challenges also open new opportunities for wider negotiations of cultural heritage and rethinking what cultural heritage institutions and practices are. This special issue brings together scholars from different disciplines to provide critically and empirically grounded perspectives on the datafication of cultural heritage institutions’ exhibition and collection practices.