Interacting with digital cultural heritage collections via annotations: the CULTURA approach

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces the main characteristics of the digital cultural collections that constitute the use cases presently in use in the CULTURA environment. A section on related work follows giving an account on efforts on the management of digital annotations that are pertinent and that have been considered. Afterwards the innovative annotation features of the CULTURA portal for digital humanities are described; those features are aimed at improving the interaction of non-specialist users and general public with digital cultural heritage content. The annotation functions consist of two modules: the FAST annotation service as back-end and the CAT Web front-end integrated in the CULTURA portal. The annotation features have been, and are being, tested with different types of users and useful feedback is being collated, with the overall aim of generalising the approach to diverse document collections and not only the area of cultural heritage.

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Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Computers in other domains

    • Digital libraries and archives

• Information systems

  • Information retrieval

    • Document representation

      • Document collection models

  • Information systems applications

    • Digital libraries and archives