The Value of “Values”: A Case Study on the Design of Value-Inclusive Multimedia Content for the Menorah Artefact Collection at the Hecht Museum, Haifa, Israel

Abstract

Cultural heritage (CH) values are important for understanding the significance of heritage assets. For that reason, the presentation of CH should go beyond providing factual information. It should reflect relevant values that are held by the curators, the heritage experts and the communities of non-expert citizen stakeholders. Associating values with the information content in a CH communication product is a challenging task. Digital technologies require special attention to communicate values along with heritage information to achieve meaningful and impactful communication. In this paper, we focus on a socio-technological framework for the integration of values into the information content provided to visitors. We have designed, applied and evaluated an eight-stage process for the inclusion of CH values in the information content and their communication to museum visitors. It has been applied at the Hecht Museum, located at the University of Haifa, Israel, where museum artefacts are currently presented to the visitors with informational panels that have been designed without any attention to values. Two digital applications, built by applying the eight-stage process, were developed. One was designed to cover the information and heritage values already available within the museum descriptions. The other was developed by following the suggested process, which accounts for values that were collected through a review of the literature, interviews with experts and interactions with non-experts. The two applications were tested, iterated and evaluated to assess the impact of value inclusion. Results show that both visitors and experts appreciated the value-enhanced communication. The evaluation of user feedback has further substantiated the creation of content that is inclusive of CH values, for the communication of museum artefacts.