The growing impact of information technology and digitisation, ever since the beginning of the 1990s, has given cultural heritage institutions a fresh impulse to deal with the problem of accessibility of their collections (Van Vliet, 2009). Their efforts, however, are still mostly aimed at cultural preservation, and, for the time being, have done little to bring us closer to the dream of a Virtual Collection in the Netherlands. For instance, more than 30 million art objects were still not digitised in 2008 in the Netherlands (Veeger, 2008). Meanwhile, it has become urgent to further open the door. The Internet’s dominant role in recent years has caused a change in the relationship between media producers, suppliers and consumers in the traditional media landscape. The cultural sector must therefore decide what to do with today’s digital media in response to the general public’s changing role, and for the purpose of improving accessibility. The use of multiple media resources and particularly resources like the Internet and mobile telephony seems to be inevitable. The only question that remains is: how? This paper addresses this question by focussing on social tagging and storytelling, and reports the results of an empirical study on tagging behaviour using the social tagging platform www.ikweetwatditis.nl (see also Van Vliet et al., 2010).

1.1 Increase in accessibility

Searchability is crucial for the accessibility of our digital cultural heritage. The ability to find digital art objects begins with an effective description. Therein lies the problem. If a description can be found at all, it usually includes only a minimal amount of technical data focusing on object management issues such as documentation of the acquisition process, storage, and art-historical features. Often the same object descriptions are used when art collections are presented on the net. Consequently, any problems in describing the physical art collections are reflected digitally. E.g., as a result of strict annotation standards, the formal description of a painting with the image of a cow might not even include the word ‘cow’. As a result, the painting cannot be found using ‘cow’ as a search term. The art object may become less appealing for the visitor’s since it is taken out of context, and only a database record is shown (Trant, 2006a/b). In conclusion: art collections are available, but not accessible; descriptions have been made, but are incomprehensible.

1.2 Social tagging

The usage of social tagging could offer a possible solution for engaging the public and making object descriptions more public-friendly. Tagging entails assigning labels and/or keywords to a specific item, such as a painting. It is social tagging when multiple people are engaged in this activity, and tags are mutually visible. Various studies suggest tagging has a positive effect, on both the added value for art collections and visitor involvement with those collections (Marlow et al., 2006; Trant, 2006a/b; Trant & Wyman, 2006: Trant, Bearman & Chun, 2007). The frequently mentioned benefits associated with social tagging include:

Tags provide access points that are closer to the idioms used by visitors than formal object descriptions.
Tags add new information to art collections that is known to the members of the general public but that is not available to a particular institute (Trant, 2006a).
Tagging increases people’s involvement with art collections: taggers contribute meanings that may provide insight into visitors’ perceptions of art collections.
Tags can be used to personalize access to art collections by making suggestions, composing virtual expositions, route maps, or virtual meeting places for visitors (Van Setten et al., 2006; Trant, 2006b).
2. Research questions

The question relating the useful deployment of social tagging can be formulated as: what choices museums have to make for the deployment of social tagging?

Two such choices have been identified for the purpose of this project. In similar research, researchers usually work with a dichotomy of professionals versus laymen. In doing so, there is little consideration of the different degrees of knowledge among visitors. In addition to the museum curator and the layman, there are ‘well-informed’ interested people including amateur scientists and retired professionals to be found among the visitors (see Wubs & Huysmans, 2006a). It is extremely relevant for museums to cater for and continue to involve this group in their collections. It may be more useful to deploy social tagging for a specific group of experts as opposed to a broad audience.

A second choice is whether or not to go beyond the limited power of expression of tags. No matter how powerful tags may be, they are still essentially keywords with a limited amount of information. It may therefore also be interesting to consider other forms of expression, such as digital storytelling. Stories offer a personal perspective and contribute to a personal interpretation of art objects (see further Van Vliet, 2009). We defined three possible effects of social tagging:

Enrichment: tags enrich collections by way of adding information. Taggers make a statement about art objects and, as a result, tell us something about the relationship between visitors and art objects;
Accessibility: tags can be used as search terms to find art objects;
Involvement: the tagging process creates involvement. Through tagging the visitor is engaged in a process of viewing, analysing and describing the object.  One can expect that these cognitive processes will arouse interest in art collections.
The analysis of the three possible effects gave rise to a multitude of research questions and hypotheses (see Van Vliet et al., 2010). Two of these questions will be addressed in this paper.

Download the full paper : Hekman, E. Van Vliet, H. 2011. Bringing the Past To the Present. Paper presented at the Consortium on Applied Research and Professional Education (CARPE) conference 2011.

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