Digital heritage

The Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage of UNESCO defines digital heritage as embracing "cultural, educational, scientific and administrative resources, as well as technical, legal, medical and other kinds of information created digitally, or converted into digital form from existing analogue resources".[1]

Digital heritage also includes the use of digital media in the service of understanding and preserving cultural or natural heritage.[2][3][4]

The digitization of both cultural heritage and Natural heritage serves to enable the permanent access of current and future generations to culturally important objects ranging from literature and paintings to flora, fauna, or habitats. It is also used in the preservation and access of objects with enduring or significant historical, scientific, or cultural value including buildings, archeological sites, and natural phenomena.[5] The main idea is the transformation of a material object into a virtual copy. It should not be confused with digital humanities, which uses digitizing technology to specifically help with research.[6] There have been several debates concerning the efficiency of the process of digitizing heritage. Some of the drawbacks refer to the deterioration and technological obsolescence due to the lack of funding for archival materials and underdeveloped policies that would regulate such a process. Another main social debate has taken place around the restricted accessibility due to the digital divide that exists around the world. Nevertheless, new technologies enable easy, instant and cross boarder access to the digitized work. Many of these technologies include spatial and surveying technology to gain aerial or 3D images.

Digital heritage is also used to monitor cultural heritage sites over years to help with preservation, maintenance, and sustainable tourism.  It aims to observe any changes, diseases, or deterioration that may occur on objects.[5]

  1. ^ "Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage". UNESCO. October 15, 2003. Retrieved July 9, 2015.
  2. ^ Yehuda Kalay; Thomas Kvan; Janice Affleck, eds. (2007). New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-97770-2.
  3. ^ Ann Marie Sullivan, Cultural Heritage & New Media: A Future for the Past, 15 J. MARSHALL REV. INTELL. PROP. L. 604 (2016) https://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1392&context=ripl
  4. ^ Fiona Cameron; Sarah Kenderdine, eds. (2007). Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-03353-4.
  5. ^ a b Wang, Xinyuan; Lasaponara, Rosa; Luo, Lei; Chen, Fulong; Wan, Hong; Yang, Ruixia; Zhen, Jing (2020), Guo, Huadong; Goodchild, Michael F.; Annoni, Alessandro (eds.), "Digital Heritage", Manual of Digital Earth, Singapore: Springer, pp. 565–591, doi:10.1007/978-981-32-9915-3_17, ISBN 978-981-329-915-3, S2CID 242714151
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference :7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).