Heritage Collections Research Articles

The usefulness of intellectual property rights in selected areas of museum activity

ABSTRACT As intangible resources, intellectual property rights are difficult to measure. The search for ways to measure and research them and their impact on the current activities of nonprofit organizations such as museums is important because it translates into the effectiveness of the institution’s cooperation with the environment and the stabilization of the organization over time. I aimed to identify the usefulness of intellectual property rights in the context of three main areas of museum activity: heritage collection and preservation, research and education, and sharing and access to heritage. To achieve the goal, I conducted empirical research among museum employees from Poland and other European countries, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and Canada. A total of 190 respondents completed the survey. I determined the usefulness of intangible resources not by the characteristics of these resources, but by the key areas of museum activity resulting from the ICOM definition. Research results indicated that the most useful intellectual property rights were copyrights to collections. In selected areas, rights to employee works, databases, and know-how, namely implicit specialized knowledge resulting from employee experience, were also useful.

Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (NEH)

Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (NEH)

Preserving and Presenting the Rotterdam Erasmus Collection since 1868

Abstract The unique collection of Erasmiana in the Rotterdam Public Library has a long history in which there has been varying attention to acquisition, preservation and presentation. This article describes how individuals such as donors, directors and curators developed the collection since it was first mentioned in 1868. This development is reconstructed through archival sources such as year reports, newspaper articles and material evidence in the collection itself. From this reconstruction, it is possible to distinguish three phases in the history of the Erasmus Collection in which it was treated as respectively an archival collection, a scholarly source and a heritage collection. The case study shows why it is important for scholars who make use of a collection to understand the historical development of its contents and the status of the collection as such. Furthermore, knowledge of the history of a collection is valuable for exploring today’s balance between preservation and presentation.

Engaging culturally and linguistically diverse youth in semiotic analysis for community‐based inquiry

AbstractThis manuscript examines multimodal storytelling as community inquiry for an urban high school class of 30 first‐ and second‐generation bi/multilingual immigrant students, most of whom maintained transnational connections. We share how these students, in an A.P. Research class, engaged in community‐based inquiry and utilized various multimodal artifacts from a university cultural heritage collection, including a field trip to the cultural heritage archives, to analyze signs and symbols. We asked: How did students engage with semiotic resources and approaches to support inquiry about their school and neighborhood communities? Findings showed that students drew upon their linguistic and cultural experiences to analyze signs and symbols, yet in their digital storytelling presentations some student groups chose signs and symbols that reified stereotypical views of their neighborhood despite their insider status in the local community. We offer recommendations for using cultural heritage artifacts to advance multimodal meaning‐making in teaching and research.

Community Partnerships in Digital Cultural Heritage: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACTCommunity partnerships with libraries, archives, and museums are increasingly recognized as essential to developing and stewarding complete, accurate, and equitable digital cultural records. While research and practice in this area has burgeoned, there is limited empirical research characterizing the state of the field. This study offers preliminary findings of a systematic, state‐of‐the‐art review of community‐institutional partnerships in digital cultural heritage collections and initiatives. This review systematically identifies wide‐ranging, active community partnerships among relevant institutions and their high‐level objectives, and a correlated array of approaches taken in pursuit of those objectives. The resulting conceptual framework and open access dataset form the base of a toolkit supporting community‐institutional partnerships for a more sustainable, community‐centered cultural record.

Adapting Machine Translation Engines to the Needs of Cultural Heritage Metadata

The Europeana digital library features cultural heritage collections from over 3,000 European institutions described in 37 languages. However, most textual metadata describe the records in a single language, the data providers’ language. Improving Europeana’s multilingual accessibility presents challenges due to the unique characteristics of cultural heritage metadata, often expressed in short phrases and using in-domain terminology. This work presents the EuropeanaTranslate project’s approach and results, aimed at translating Europeana metadata records from 23 EU languages into English. Machine Translation engines were trained on a cleaned selection of bilingual and synthetic data from Europeana, including multilingual vocabularies and relevant cultural heritage repositories. Automatic translations were evaluated through standard metrics and human assessments by linguists and domain cultural heritage experts. The results showed significant improvements when compared to the generic engines used before the in-domain training as well as the eTranslation service for most languages. The EuropeanaTranslate engines have translated over 29 million metadata records on Europeana.eu. Additionally, the MT engines and training datasets are publicly available via the European Language Grid Catalogue and the ELRC-SHARE repository.

Leveraging community engagement to contribute to Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 11

The aim of this study was to determine the ways in which academic libraries in South Africa use community engagement as a strategy to advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals – specifically Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 11 – in the context of the study. It followed a multi-methods approach to interview and hold focus group discussions with heads of libraries and librarians, respectively, in South African public university libraries. It was found that the libraries advance these Sustainable Development Goals in various ways, such as by employing library student assistants and interns from different backgrounds, and by serving as employers themselves. Furthermore, the libraries serve as custodians of local culture and heritage by curating, digitising and preserving local collections for posterity. However, collaborative efforts between the libraries and other heritage institutions, such as museums, archives and galleries, are few and far between, which is deemed a missed opportunity for more meaningful cultural and heritage impacts for these institutions. More collaborations and partnerships between these institutions are recommended, especially with regard to the digitisation of cultural heritage collections. Therefore, a clarion call is made for libraries to think more expansively about their role and consider including sustainable thinking as part of their mission in line with the American Library Association. The results demonstrate that libraries are uniquely positioned to advance the Sustainable Development Goals.

Interoperability of Oral History Metadata: An Ontological Model

ABSTRACT This article presents the metadata characteristics of oral history collections and the challenges faced when attempting to provide long-term access to audio or video recordings. We propose an ontological model combining the International Committee for Documentation Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM) from the cultural heritage field with European Broadcasting Union Core (EBUCore) from the European audiovisual community. We form a mapping methodology with the goal of combining the strongest attributes from these two standards. The goal of this research is to generate a conceptual model for the description of oral history interviews in order to reveal the entities participating in the interviews, their semantics, and their relationships. The proposed model enables the meaningful exchange of information of audiovisual collections and their integration with other cultural heritage collections in the online environment.

Collection Data: Sharing, Discovery, Inspiration, and Innovation

In recent years, the traditional use of digital collections as surrogates for the physical has shifted to a paradigm of viewing collections as data suitable for computational use and novel research methods. The burgeoning collections as data movement is gaining momentum among galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) worldwide. Strategic initiatives, experimentation, innovation, and inspirational learning are occurring as digital libraries and digital humanities progress and work to develop sustainable approaches for collections as data programs. What is the position of collections as data in an ever-changing information landscape of open access, linked data, and shared data of cultural heritage collections? What has the past decade brought to the field?

A novel contaminant in museums? A cross-sectional study on xerophilic Aspergillus growth in climate-controlled repositories

In the last decade, extensive fungal growth has developed in Danish museums parallel to climate change, challenging occupational health and heritage preservation. The growth was unexpected as the museums strived to control relative humidity below 60 %, and it should exceed 75 % to risk growth. A Danish case study found xerophilic Aspergillus species able to grow at low relative humidity in a museum repository. This cross-sectional study aimed to examine whether xerophilic growth from Aspergillus section Restricti has become a novel contaminant nationally distributed in Danish museum repositories striving to control relative humidity according to international environmental recommendations for heritage collections. The study examined The National Museum of Denmark and eight large State Recognized museums distributed throughout Denmark. It was based on 600 swab and tape-lift samples and 60 MAS100-Eco and filter air samples analyzed for fungi with cultivation and morphological identification, Big-Dye-Sanger sequencing, CaM-Nanopore and ITS-Illumina amplicon sequencing. The study showed growth from seven xerophilic Aspergillus species: A. conicus, A. domesticus, A. glabripes, A. halophilicus, A. magnivesiculatus, A. penicilloides, A. vitricola, of which three are new to Denmark, and 13 xerotolerant Aspergillus species. There was no growth from other fungal species. The multiple detection approach provided a broad characterization; however, there was variance in the detected species depending on the analysis approach. Cultivation and Big-Dye Sanger sequencing showed the highest Aspergillus diversity, detecting 17 species; CaM-Nanopore amplicon sequencing detected 12 species; and ITS-illumina amplicon sequencing detected two species but the highest overall diversity. Cultivation, followed by Big-Dye Sanger and CaM-amplicon sequencing, proved the highest compliance. The study concluded that xerophilic Aspergillus growth is nationally distributed and suggests species from Aspergillus section Restricti as a novel contaminant in climate-controlled museum repositories. To safeguard occupational health and heritage preservation research in sustainable solutions, avoiding xerophilic growth in museum collections is most important.

Where to Start: Creating a Roadmap for Collection Storage Planning Through a Collaborative Values-Based Approach: A National Endowment for the Humanities Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections project at The New York Public Library

Collection storage is one of the most complex collaborations a museum, library, or archive can undertake. A high-level initial assessment can help overcome the inertia and complexity that overwhelms larger organizations due to the number of stakeholders, spaces, and collections. Large institutions need to rise above room-level preservation issues and focus on global, values-based thinking. With support from the Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (SCHC) program of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), The Research Libraries of the New York Public Library (NYPL) designed a collaborative pre-planning exercise to inform long-range collection storage planning for over fifty storage areas within its Manhattan research centers. Pulling together experts in architecture, preservation environment, and sustainability to review NYPL’s storage needs in collaboration with an internal team of stakeholders, the project established foundations for ongoing values-based collaborative planning. Project design and considerations on synthesizing observations into recommendations are discussed in this article.

THE STORY OF YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHER IN “MESATYA – TELUSUR PUPUTAN BADUNG” DOCUMENTARY FILM

Documentary films are a medium for crafting a message and getting that message out to the broader community. The philosophical value of cultural roles and responsibilities can be presented through visual and verbal messages, and documentaries are one of the most accessible digital educational media. The presentation of the documentary Mesatya – Telusur Puputan Badung is a historical story that happened in 1906. It was inspired by the National Museum of Badung royal heritage collection, which the Dutch confiscated during the Military Expedition in 1906. This film depicts Bali with its beautiful nature and culture and the story of the bloody tragedy that ever happened to maintain self-respect and country. Focuses on sequences described in terms of the opening, central, and closing scenes, including the cultural and inspiring values presented in the film through visual and linguistic information. Also, most visuals of Mesatya – Telusur Puputan Badungdocumentary film represented a reconstruction photography technique. We can see that the story runs from the perspective of a young photographer who wants to find inspiration from the event. Audiences are invited to enjoy every shot and scene with a visual aesthetic full of meaning. We can see a detailed description of the meaning of the photographer's journey.

Heritage Iconographic Content Structuring: from Automatic Linking to Visual Validation

This article presents a global framework dedicated to the structuring of iconographic heritage collections. To alleviate the poor interlinking both between collections and contents, a first step of automatic linking exploiting content-based image retrieval approaches is evaluated and adapted to the visual variability of such heritage contents. To ensure understanding and analysis of the contents in a structured fashion, a 3D immersive web platform is also introduced alongside visual-based analysis tools. Finally, by exploiting both automatic linking and manual interventions in the visualization platform, an iterative, semi-automatic structuring pipeline is proposed to solve difficult cases missed by automatic structuring, and then improve structuring optimally. Here, we demonstrate the potential of the proposal on the geographic iconographic heritage of Paris, with a dataset of 10k images belonging to several institutions, thus poorly connected nor organized globally.

Assessment of Dust Deposition through Image Analysis in Complex and Remote Exhibition Sites: Study in the Cloister of the Santa María de El Paular Monastery in the Sierra de Guadarrama, Spain

Dust deposition is an important aspect of the conservation of heritage collections. Most proposed methods for dust monitoring focus on total area coverage or airborne concentrations. There is a lack of published data and methodologies to obtain size distributions of deposited particles on real historic sites. The purpose of the study was to develop and describe a method for obtaining quantitative data from dust deposition without the need for sophisticated laboratory equipment, based on optical microscopy photography and software-based image analysis. Bare microscope slides were used as passive collectors of dust. Tests were carried out on a collection of oil paintings displayed in the cloister of the Monastery of Santa María de El Paular in the Sierra de Guadarrama in Spain for one year, with a distance of 100 km between this place and the laboratory. The designed method allowed for the detection of significant differences in deposition depending on the location and seasonal period. Vertically orientated bare slides did not provide relevant information and a magnification of 50× was not really useful. However, horizontal collectors and a magnification of 10× allowed studying the deposition of particles above 2 μm2.

Pleasing the Wrathful Deities: Ethical Approaches to the Care of Tibetan Skull Drums

ABSTRACT In 2023, a number of sacred Tibetan ritual musical instruments fashioned from human tissue were donated to Northumbria University, England. After lengthy consultation with stakeholders, the university took the decision to accept the donation in order to store and care for these objects in a culturally respectful manner. This process involved working closely with the Tibetan diaspora in exile to manage, research and provide access in a culturally sensitive way until such time as they might be returned to their communities of origin. Framing the university’s decision were current and ongoing debates within the heritage sector regarding the ethics of storing, researching and displaying human remains, especially where they belong to cultures from beyond the Global West. However, the cultural and ritual status of these objects, not to mention their geographical origin, is such that they do not fall easily into the same defined status as other historical human remains in western heritage collections. We present here ongoing work to build transparent and sensitive collections and research policies specifically around two Tibetan ritual thöd-rnga skull drums, traditionally used in the Chöd (gCod) ritual practised in Tibetan Tantric (Vajrayana) Buddhism. We situate our work within the complex discourse on caring for contested objects in the UK in the midst of the restitution and decolonisation agendas, before considering the objects themselves as material artefacts, and the ethics of caring for and researching these objects within the context of a university collection.

Is medieval distant viewing possible? : Extending and enriching annotation of legacy image collections using visual analytics

Abstract Distant viewing approaches have typically used image datasets close to the contemporary image data used to train machine learning models. To work with images from other historical periods requires expert annotated data, and the quality of labels is crucial for the quality of results. Especially when working with cultural heritage collections that contain myriad uncertainties, annotating data, or re-annotating, legacy data is an arduous task. In this paper, we describe working with two pre-annotated sets of medieval manuscript images that exhibit conflicting and overlapping metadata. Since a manual reconciliation of the two legacy ontologies would be very expensive, we aim (1) to create a more uniform set of descriptive labels to serve as a “bridge” in the combined dataset, and (2) to establish a high-quality hierarchical classification that can be used as a valuable input for subsequent supervised machine learning. To achieve these goals, we developed visualization and interaction mechanisms, enabling medievalists to combine, regularize and extend the vocabulary used to describe these, and other cognate, image datasets. The visual interfaces provide experts an overview of relationships in the data going beyond the sum total of the metadata. Word and image embeddings as well as co-occurrences of labels across the datasets enable batch re-annotation of images, recommendation of label candidates, and support composing a hierarchical classification of labels.

Gagasan Pelestarian Gedung Singa di Kota Surabaya melalui Revitalisasi

An abandoned heritage building that was built in 1901, known as Gedung Singa in the city of Surabaya, was listed for auction and the plan had raised protests from the heritage activists community. This concern was emanated by previous cases of demolition of protected heritage buildings as happened to Toko NAM, which are lamented by the heritage activists community who have become a major contributor in the effort of safeguarding heritage, including listed heritage objects. This shows the urgency of negotiating Gedung Singa’s significance to the people and of proposing an appropriate form of revitalization as to assure its sustainable preservation. This study uses exploratory literature study method and approaches the issue by using a theory known as Interaction Field Model. The result proposes a plan to turn Gedung Singa into a museum-restaurant showcasing returned heritage collections from the Netherlands as a way to strengthen the image of Surabaya as the city of heroes. Other collections that may be displayed are chosen objects in accordance to the thematic exhibitions which are arranged temporarily to accommodate interactions with the people.

Risk analysis for preventive conservation of heritage collections in Mediterranean museums: case study of the museum of fine arts in Alexandria (Egypt)

The impacts of climate change on heritage collections in Mediterranean museums are serious and lead to accelerated material degradation, loss of value, increasing conservation costs and climatisation. Climate change scenarios and simulation models have been developed to predict the extreme and average future environmental conditions and to assess the future long-term risks caused by global warming for museum buildings and their collections in Mediterranean countries, with Egypt being particularly at risk. This paper presents the results of the risk analysis of the indoor and outdoor environments in Alexandria Museum of Fine Arts (AMFA) in Egypt to provide an overview of the current situation of conservation and museum management and to provide evidence-based data to support decision-making regarding preventive conservation given the museum's limited funding, capacity and resources. Unfortunately, the air quality in the museum cannot be considered satisfactory and specific measures need to be taken to improve the level of air quality and museum and building management. The results enabled an assessment of indoor air quality and provided information on potential risks to the museum building and collections, including variations in temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH), concentrations of NO2, SO2, O3, CO2, acetic and formic acid and lighting conditions, as well as the location and management of the museum. The results necessitate the development of a preventive conservation plan to address the challenges associated with high T/RH fluctuations and pollution pressure. This requires more regular use of the HVAC system within certain T/RH set points as well as minimising light exposure and the use of UV-filtering glazing. Care should be taken to ensure that housekeeping and emergency preparedness reduce the damping and salt florescence in the museum building. However, dealing with the impact of climate change on indoor and outdoor environments and museum collections in Mediterranean museums requires a holistic and adaptive approach that includes joint collaboration, research, training and strategic planning to ensure the long-term preservation of valuable cultural heritage collections in different climates with customised adaptations based on local environmental conditions, resources and needs. Resilience planning should be region-specific and take into account the potential impacts of extreme weather events, sea level rise and other climate-related challenges.

Indoor air pollutants and their seasonal monitoring in European museums

The monitoring of indoor air pollutants is an important part of the management of heritage collections. In this work, acetic acid, formic acid, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and NO2 were measured with passive samplers along with temperature and relative humidity once per season in seven European institutions of different sizes with different types of objects. The measurements were carried out in a variety of locations, from modern and old display cases in exhibition rooms of different sizes to storage rooms and their enclosures for different types of objects. The results were evaluated based on the characteristics of the sampling locations and the extent to which the changing seasons affect pollutant concentrations were estimated. The dataset obtained from this study can be a valuable asset as a snapshot of the current state of the environment in European heritage collections.

Image searching in an open photograph archive: search tactics and faced barriers in historical research

During the last decades, cultural heritage collections have been digitized, for example, for the use of academic scholars. However, earlier studies have mainly focused on the use of textual materials. Thus, little is known about how digitized photographs are used and searched in digital humanities. The aim of this paper is to investigate the applied search tactics and perceived barriers when looking for historical photographs from a digital image archive for research and writing tasks. The case archive of this study contains approximately 160,000 historical wartime photographs that are openly available. The study is based on a qualitative interview and demonstration data of 15 expert users of the image collection searching photographs for research and writing tasks. Critical incident questions yielded a total of 37 detailed real-life search examples and 158 expressed barriers to searching. Results show that expert users apply and combine different tactics (keywords, filtering and browsing) for image searching, and rarely using one tactic only is enough. During searching users face various barriers, most of them focusing on keyword searching due to the shortcomings of image metadata. Barriers were mostly in the context of the collection and tools. Although scholars have benefited from the efforts put into digitizing cultural heritage collections, providing digitized content openly online is not enough if there are no sufficient means for accessing the content. Automatic annotation methods are one option for creating metadata to improve the findability of the images. However, a better understanding of human information interaction with image data is needed to better support digitalization in the humanities in this respect.