How to manage cultural heritage assets? What visitors are thinking about? What about digital technology and social media? I have been working with several cultural heritage institutions as a consultant, have professional experience on working in a museum with information management and dissemination, been teacher, lecturer and conducted research on diverse aspects of cultural heritage information.

 I was last week on wednesday and thursday (9-10/12)  at DISH 2009 (DIgital Strategies for Heritage) conference in Rotterdam. My own presentation Participatory management of heritage assets (presentation also attached to this article) discussed participation, strategies and critical success factors for engaging users and experts vs. amateurs dichotomy.

The issue of organising information in a functioning manner concerns equally the individuals, organisations and entire domains of knowledge. To be successful, an organisation needs to provide its members with precise information at the right moment to complete the right assignment. The problem is not to point out who is the available person, or what is the available information or what is the assignment. The problem is to make them all converge in a productive manner.

Research initiative launched in 1998/1999 for developing enhanced usability and usages of digital information media systems for presentation, storage and publication of cultural heritage information. Concrete aim of the initiative is to study, test and adapt new digital IT/ICT technologies for use in cultural heritage sector. Despite disseminating results in scientific research reports, the initiative has strong affiliation in forwarding the research by creating and studying working end products in authentic environment.