Abstract
The chapter investigates the effects of technology on the provision of cultural heritage services. A common tenet in the literature is that, because of technology, the scope and the mission of cultural organizations are changing and that overall education and cultural appreciation as well as cultural participation are enhanced. With respect to this conventional wisdom, the chapter offers a systematic analysis of the effects of technological advancements on the demand and supply of cultural heritage services, taking into account their different economic features and having also in mind the differences across cultural organizations (public, private) and their business models. Some empirical evidence drawn from European surveys offers an overview of the potentialities of new technologies for the future of cultural heritage.
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Notes
- 1.
The concept of digitalization has evolved beyond the conversion of an analogue signal to a digital one and includes the whole system of digital platforms and standards (Henten and Tadayoni 2011).
- 2.
The USA Survey of Public Participation in the Arts examines attendance at performing arts events (such as music, dance, or theater performances, or outdoor performing arts festivals) and at visual arts events or activities (such as art museums or galleries, craft fairs, and sites with historic or design value).
- 3.
‘Benchmark’ activities are: jazz events, classical music performances, opera, musical plays, non-musical plays, ballet, and art museums or galleries. These activities are identified as ‘benchmark’ because participation in them has been tracked since 1982.
- 4.
Analogously, 54% visited an historical monument or site in 2007 and 52% in 2013. This decrease is not only linked to the economic crisis since a major part of the EU population indicates lack of interest and time as major barriers to attendance.
- 5.
See below, para 2.3.
- 6.
The changing strategies of cultural producers are examined in Sect. 2.3.
- 7.
OECD (2001) outlines significant differences in the Internet access in the United States across groups from different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds which tend to persist through time.
- 8.
Data are provided by http://www.europeana.eu/portal/search.html.
- 9.
‘Orphan works’ are works like books, newspaper and magazine articles and films that are still protected by copyright but whose authors or other right-holders are not known or cannot be located or contacted to obtain copyright permissions. Directive 2012/28/EU sets out common rules on the digitisation and online display of these works.
- 10.
In the physical museum, examples are: simulation and virtual reality experiences; wireless connectivity enabling live feeds of information and tools; sound, laser and light shows; IMAX presentations, interactive kiosks and ‘theme park-like’ attractions. On the web, examples of applications range from the online access to collections and databases to online exhibitions; virtual exhibitions; downloadable and streamed multimedia content; interactive maps; dedicated sites, games and play spaces for children and young people; personalised spaces—creating own favourites and tagging objects; use of social media networks (Bakhshi and Throsby 2010).
- 11.
Sequeira and Morgado (2013) analyse the techniques and methods employed in virtual archaeology for imaging cultural artefacts and heritage sites; Styliani et al. (2009) survey the emerging technologies, which are widely used to create virtual museums, and explore the various kinds of virtual museums in existence.
- 12.
Bakhshi and Throsby (2012) report the experience of the use of the web by the British art gallery the Tate to provide access to a virtual presentation of an exhibition ‘Colour Chart’ in its Liverpool gallery. The website attracted 66,190 unique visits while only 19,000 visited the Tate Liverpool. The wider online audience includes mainly regular visitors to art galleries but also the existing clientele of the Tate’s four galleries, but with a larger proportion of low income visitors than go to a gallery exhibition.
- 13.
Different types of libraries find different ways to adapt their model to new media (Salaün 2013).
- 14.
The two-sided market model is widely employed in creative industries, for instance in commercial broadcasting, which makes programmes available to viewers without direct payment and gets finance from selling airtime to advertisers and sponsors. The market value of advertising depends on the number of users of the ‘free’ service. Many applications on the Internet, such as search engines and social networks, are developing more complex, multi-sided markets.
- 15.
See below, Sect. 3.
- 16.
Methods of appointments, contractual arrangements, evaluation criteria and systems of finance are relevant in affecting CH institutions’ behaviour.
- 17.
In this direction, for instance, the European Commission has issued the Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation (2011/711/EU) and there are the related Council conclusions on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation adopted in 2012. There is also the Council Decision (2013/743/EU) establishing the specific programme implementing Horizon 2020—the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2014–2020), in particular Societal Challenge 6 (Innovative, inclusive and reflective societies). Moreover, the art. 5(2) c of Regulation 2013/1301/EU on the European Regional Development Fund considers “strengthening ICT applications for … e-culture” as an investment priority.
- 18.
Frau-Meigs (2014) offers a mapping of reports as well as projects and programs of international organizations on the impact of digitization on the cultural sector.
- 19.
National reports are available in the Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe (http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/index.php).
- 20.
Other aspects under investigation refer to the implementation by Member States of the Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation, using a number of good practices reported by Member States as indicators. Other indicators are the number of Member States making use of the EU’s Structural Funds to co-fund digitisation and e-culture-related activities and the number of public-private partnerships creating new ways for funding digitisation of cultural material.
- 21.
Enumerate Core Survey 3 is the third edition of a European survey monitoring the status of cultural heritage in Europe. 1030 institutions belonging to 32 European countries participated to this third round (participants to Core Survey 2 were about 1400). The dataset includes information for each institution in 2015 with respect to: the state of digitisation activity, the dimension and characteristics of collections, digital access, preservation strategy and expenditure. Institutions are distinguished in 4 types (Museum, 34.47%; library, 33.59%; Archive/record office, 21.12%; other type, 10.78%). Almost all institutions have collections to be preserved and 84% have a digital collection (this percentage was 83% in Core Survey 1 and 87% in Core Survey 2). For more information, see http://www.den.nl/art/uploads/files/Publicaties/ENUMERATE_Report_Core_Survey_3_2015.pdf.
- 22.
In 2014 almost 20% of Europeans have never used Internet; with great differences between the North of Europe—where this percentage was below 5%—and the Mediterranean area—where it was about 30%. From a European perspective, the number of persons using the Internet has increased in the last decade: starting from 40% in 2003 it has reached an average of 75.2% in 2013. In terms of broadband connections, in 2014 the European average rate was 78% with differences between the North of Europe, (with an average close to 90%) and the South (with an average close to per cent) (Da Milano and Righolt 2015). Of course, disparities across continents are much wider as it is clearly showed, for example, by the fact that in 2011 in the world as a whole, more than 67% of individuals had no access to the internet, this percentage rising to more than 86% in Africa (Krebs 2012).
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Rizzo, I. (2016). Technological Perspectives for Cultural Heritage. In: Rizzo, I., Towse, R. (eds) The Artful Economist. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40637-4_12
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