See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/332257627

The role of libraries in managing cultural heritage information

Conference Paper · February 2019

CITATION READS

1 744

3 authors:

Evgenia Vassilakaki Georgios Giannakopoulos

67 PUBLICATIONS   201 CITATIONS   
University of West Attica
1 PUBLICATION   1 CITATION   
SEE PROFILE
SEE PROFILE

Ioannis Triantafyllou
University of West Attica
9 PUBLICATIONS   15 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

CrossCult View project

Ψηφιακό Αρχείο του 1821 View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Evgenia Vassilakaki on 07 April 2019.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 The role of libraries in managing cultural heritage information

E. Vassilakaki, G. Giannakopoulos, I. Triantafyllou

evasilak@uniwa.gr, gian@uniwa.gr, triantafillou@uniwa.gr
Dept. Archives, Library Science & Information Studies
University of West Attica
Athens, Greece

Abstract

The last few years there is a growing discussion about the need to effectively and efficiently
manage cultural heritage information. Specifically, there is a need to describe the cultural
heritage information with the use of the most relevant and efficient standards. The goal is to
succeed among others, open access, storage of this information in digital format and linkage
among relevant resources not necessarily found and/or owned by the same cultural heritage
institution or organization. The role of libraries and especially of information professionals, is
crucial in this type of research as well as of collection management and services provider.

Cultural heritage management is defined as “the vocation and practice of managing cultural
heritage. It is a branch of cultural resources management (CRM), although it also draws on the
practices of cultural conservation, restoration, museology, archaeology, history and
architecture” (Wikipedia, 2018). Managing this type of information based on international
standards and best practices allows the re-use of the information, linkage of resources to raise
a better or different understanding of historical events but also assist other types of activities
such as restoration, digitization, preservation etc.

This paper will focus on the role that libraries and especially information professionals play
when managing cultural heritage information. Specific characteristics as well as skills that
librarians need to have will be outlined. Finally, ways to collaborate in interdisciplinary
projects will be described.

1. Introduction

The past few years there is an increase in the interest and understanding of managing and
preserving Cultural Heritage both on regional, national, European as well as international
level. Cultural Heritage (CH) is defined as “the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible
attributes of a group society that is inherited from past generations” (Falser 2011). The need
has emerged even more intense after the recent, man provoked and/or natural catastrophes
(i.e. war in Iraq, tsunami, earthquakes, fires etc). Hence, it was apparent, now more than ever,
to designated authorities at all levels that Cultural Heritage is important and therefore all
needed measures need to be taken in order to ensure its preservation for future generations.

European Union (EU) has funded over the last few years a significant number of large-scale
projects in Cultural Heritage sector namely Europeana1, CHESS2, Emotive3, CrossCult4 just to

1
https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en [Date accessed 28/12/2018]
2
http://chessexperience.eu/ [Date accessed 28/12/2018]
3
https://emotiveproject.eu/ [Date accessed 28/12/2018]
4
https://crosscult.eu [Date accessed 28/12/2018]

1
name a few. These projects addressed different information needs ranging from digitization
and metadata management to preservation and conservation of Cultural Heritage objects and
re-use of information to foster re-interpretation of history and reflection on the common past
and experiences. However, the need to efficiently and effectively manage Cultural Heritage
Information is still evident and emerges every time that discussion addresses the issue of
information sharing, information exchange and thus the need to adopt and use open and
interoperable international standards.

Cultural heritage management (CHM) is defined as “the vocation and practice of managing
cultural heritage. It is a branch of cultural resources management (CRM), although it also
draws on the practices of cultural conservation, restoration, museology, archaeology, history
and architecture” (Wikipedia 2018a). The management of cultural heritage was enabled
through the development and adoption of Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT), a term developed to “stress the role of unified communications and the integration of
telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals) and computers, as well as
necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage, and audiovisual systems, that enable
users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information” (Wikipedia 2018b).

Cutting edge, innovative technology was funded, developed and applied as a result of these
EU H2020 projects in Cultural Heritage mentioned above. However, it became now even more
apparent the need for these projects to share results and thus information adopting common-
used international standards. These projects, on their basis, are multidisciplinary that is the
researchers collaborating come from different disciplines (i.e. computer science, game
designers, developers, humanities specialists, historians) all providing their expertise and
know-how throughout the different phases of a project. This paper will focus on the role of
information professionals and of libraries. Especially, on the role they play in efficiently and
effectively managing cultural heritage information. In particular, the different roles of
information professionals will be discussed in the context of an EU H2020 project, the
CrossCult.

The current landscape for cultural heritage information is consisted from one hand of data
silos in large and small institutions. These are accessible through APIs and their own portals
and big aggregators as well as of interested users, students, librarians or researchers, who
want to access and retrieve information preserved in these data silos. These users are
enforced to find the access point to these silos and develop the needed retrieval strategy to
identify the specific information. However, not all information is indexed and accessible given
that quite a lot of cultural heritage information is under licensing and rights-management
control. Therefore, what it is needed is the development of a single access point for retrieval
of information on an intelligent aggregation that uses international metadata standards for
managing information (Seifert et al. 2017).

CrossCult5 is focusing on empowering reuse of digital cultural heritage in context-aware

crosscuts of European history with the view to spur a change in the way European citizens
appraise history. It will foster the re-interpretation of what citizens may have learnt in the
light of cross-border interconnections among pieces of cultural heritage, other citizens'
viewpoints and physical venues. It seeks to increase retention, stimulate reflection and help
citizens appreciate their common past and present in a more holistic manner. Technology and

5
www.crosscult.eu [Date accessed 28/12/2018]

2
mobile apps will be used and a user-friendly and a cost-efficient tool for experience designers,
museum experts and external stakeholders, will be developed.

In this context, different professionals with diverse backgrounds came together to explore
ways of re-using information, develop innovative technologies to foster interpretation of
history and reflection on common past experiences among civilizations. This paper will further
contribute to the argument on the significant role of libraries and information professionals
in succeeding open access, storage of information in digital format and linkage among
relevant resources not necessarily found and/or owned by the same cultural heritage
institution or organization.

2. Role of libraries and information professionals: the argument

Libraries are traditionally the organisations that focus on the collection and management of
information produced in different forms (i.e. electronic, printed). Specifically, they aim at
successfully and efficiently providing retrieval and access to information for all. In this context,
they develop a series of information services exploiting different types of resources either
owned and/or open and free. Most often, they develop synergies and consortia with the view
to better manage information and thus, develop and offer high-value services to their
clientele. One would argue that different types of libraries exist (i.e. public, academic,
research, national), serving the well-defined needs of specific users; however, the basic aim
and thus, value of a library remains the same; that is to collect, manage information in order
to provide access to all interested parties.

In doing so, libraries and information professionals adopt a variety of different roles.
Vassilakaki and Moniarou-Papaconstantinou (2015) performed an extended literature review
identifying key roles that librarians adopt nowadays. Specifically, six (6) main roles were
identified considering all types of publications (i.e. articles, book chapters etc) as well as all
types of libraries (i.e. public, academic, school). These roles were the following (Vassilakaki
and Moniarou-Papaconstantinou 2015):

1. information professionals as teachers which refereed mainly to librarians’

responsibilities to create and provide to the academic/research/school community
information literacy programs as well as be actively engaged in the learning and
teaching process;
2. technology specialists, this role is related to the development and sustainability of
Institutional Repositories and Digital Libraries. In this context, information
professionals are sought to contribute in the development of an institutional
repository, especially to define the specific metadata necessary for uploading and
preserving information on such a tool. In addition, they also need to train authors on
how to use institutional repositories to upload the research conducted within a
project and thus make it openly accessible. The authors identified the following main
characteristics for this role: understanding software, project management, collection
definition, metadata guidance, submission review and author training as the main
roles for IR librarians.
3. embedded librarians, aimed to promote collaboration among librarians, faculties and
instructors by developing information literacy programs as well as by being embedded
in a course. In regard to the second, different ways of succeeding it were proposed

3
 such as knowing the CMS and its administrators, connecting the library with the CMS,
going beyond the library link and interacting with students, collaborating with fellow
librarians and asking for assistance, following a strategy regarding course selection
and time, actively engaging with the class and using marketing techniques to promote
the service.
4. information consultants, aimed to promote scholarly communication and become
expert hunters, information controllers and copyright advisors in times of budget and
personnel cuts. In a business environment, they ought to foster innovation, provide
access to information whereas integrate the needed information into the business
managers workflow.
5. knowledge managers, select and promote information to users and train them to use
information services and resources efficiently. They need to act as managers of
knowledge repositories and facilitators of knowledge flow and communication in an
organization. Knowledge managers could take advantage of four core opportunities
(Rooi and Snyman 2007) namely facilitating an environment conducive to knowledge
sharing, managing the corporate memory, transferring information management to a
new context linked to business processes and core operations and developing
corporate information literacy.
6. subject librarians need to serve as academic liaison, promote information literacy
programs, identifying and managing information resources, adopting new ways of
serving users’ information needs, conduct copyright clearance in the context of an
institutional repository among others (Leary, Lundstrom, and Martin 2012).

These roles signify the importance of information profession for managing information and
providing relevant resources and services to diverse audiences. Projects such as EU H2020 in
Cultural Heritage could be benefited for having in their multidisciplinary team information
professionals adopting some of these roles, as will be discussed further.

In addition, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), one of the
most influential organisations in Library and Information Science (LIS) profession, has
launched since April 2017 the IFLA Global Vision6 initiative. The Global Vision aims to further
promote the discussion regarding the challenges and opportunities among libraries of
different types all around the world. An initial report of the first findings was published this
year in which over 31.000 information professionals, from 190 UN member states across the
seven continents took part and express their opinions and thoughts. The amount of responses
is impressive and thus the findings are to take under serious consideration when addressing
the roles of libraries and information professionals.

The published report (IFLA 2018) identifies the key findings of being globally united with the
same values and goals and of the need to further interconnect global and regional activities.
In addition, the report summarizes the main ten highlights along with the main ten
opportunities that information professionals and thus libraries are dealing with nowadays.
The ten highlights and opportunities are the following accordingly:

6
https://www.ifla.org/node/11905 [Date accessed 28/12/2018]

4
 A/A Highlights
1 We are dedicated to equal and free
access to information and knowledge;
2 We remain deeply committed to
supporting literacy, learning and
reading;
3 We are focused on serving our
communities;
4 We embrace digital innovation;
5 We have leaders who see the need for
strong advocacy;
6 We see funding as one of our biggest
challenges;
7 We see the need to build collaboration
and partnerships;
8 We want to be less bureaucratic,
inflexible and resistant to change;
9 We are the guardians of the memory of
the world;
10 Our young professionals are deeply
committed and eager to lead;
Opportunities
We must be champions of intellectual
freedom;
We must update our traditional roles in the
digital age;
We need to understand community needs
better and design services for impact;
We must keep up with ongoing
technological changes;
We need more and better advocates at all
levels;
We need to ensure stakeholders
understand our value and impact;
We need to develop a spirit of
collaboration;
We need to challenge current structures
and behaviours;
We need to maximise access to the world’s
documentary heritage;
We must give young professionals effective
opportunities to learn, develop and lead;

These highlights and opportunities identified in the context of Global Vision (IFLA 2018) stress
the importance of Library and Information Science profession to sharing common goals and
values. These goals and values are an integral part of the roles that information professionals
ought to play as well as adopt in the future in order to stay relevant and keep on offering high-
value services and resources to their clientele. Above all, secure access to information of every
type, freely and openly to all.

3. Information professionals in CrossCult

As already mentioned, CrossCult is a H2020 three-years project in Cultural heritage funded by

European Union and aiming to spur a change in the way European citizens appraise history.
Interpretation and reflection are two key components that the project fosters through the
development of innovative technologies mainly a platform and four different applications
created for respective pilots. These four flagship pilots, crossing different EU countries, aim to
concretize the history reflection framework within CrossCult.

The first (1) pilot addresses a large multi thematic venue specifically, the broad collection of
the National Gallery, London (UK), is used to illustrate the connections among people, places
and events across European history. The second (2) pilot exploits many small venues to
highlight the inherently cross-border nature of History by engaging people of multiple
nationalities in the discovery of connections between their respective bodies of cultural
heritage. The third (3) pilot focuses on one venue, non-typical transversal connections with
the view that visitors will go beyond the typical level of history presentation (e.g. type of a
statue, or its construction date), into deeper levels of reflection, over social aspects of life in

5
antiquity, power structures, etc. Finally, the fourth pilot addresses multiple cities, with an
interplay between past and present, and challenges the visitors’ current perceptions on
migration as a contemporary emotive topic and engages people in exploring the past to
understand the present 7.

Users experiences are designed to address the following principles: a) raise consciousness
about the importance of History, b) tackle the study of History from a multi-faceted
perspective, c) approach History not only through the written texts from successive eras, but
also through all the traces left by those societies (archaeological remains, iconography,
epigraphy, numismatics, architecture, art, etc.) and d) reckon that there are no absolute truths
in History, but various possible interpretations of the archaeological remains and contrasting
viewpoints.

In order to develop the innovative technologies and create the user experiences for the
purposes of the four pilots, a multidisciplinary team was put together from the very beginning
of the project. This multidisciplinary team proved to be an excellent choice and the added
value advantage of the project which is evident, more now than ever before, approaching the
end of the project. This team consisted of computer scientists, developers, historians,
information professionals, social and humanities scientists. All providing their expertise and
know-how according to the needs of the project.

This paper, as mentioned above, will focus on the role of information professionals in the
context of managing cultural heritage information and taking as a showcase the CrossCult
project. The emphasis will be placed on the different roles information professionals adopted
and should adopt in relevant research projects as well as the need to build synergies and
collaborate with related and non-related professions.

Specifically, information professionals need to embrace the role of technology specialists.

Hence, they need to stay informed of the recent developments in managing cultural heritage
information with the use of different international standards; be able to choose which
standard to use in which way, for each type of information (i.e. photos, museum artefacts,
books etc); take measures to succeed openness and re-use of the schema developed as well
as of the metadata created; create manuals and train other experts in using the relevant
resources to provide relevant services and/or even new, completely different services; most
importantly, they need to know how to successfully link resources (both internal and external)
and of various types with the view to promote coherence and better understanding of history,
tradition, culture. In CrossCult, knowledge of the innovative technologies and of international
standards as well as of available relevant information resources led to the development of the
CrossCult Knowledge Base (CCKB)8. A knowledge base that aims to capture the reflection
topics used in the resources (external and internal), metadata, storytelling and museum
artefacts in a standardised, fully reusable and exchangeable way. This database is constantly
enriched based on the needs of our four pilots (storytelling that is constantly written to
promote additional museum artefacts) and is available on the projects website with important
information on how to download it and use it. In this way, different venues with the same
needs are encouraged to adopt it with no cost and provide innovative, high value services to
their visitors.

7
https://www.crosscult.eu/en/research/flagship-pilots/ [Date accessed 28/12/2018]
8
https://www.crosscult.eu/en/resources/datasets/ [Date accessed 28/12/2018]

6
In the context of developing cutting-edge technology and providing cultural heritage products
and services, information professionals ought also to be information consultants. Especially,
their role focuses on fostering innovation by proposing different approaches of managing
and/or evaluating information, allowing access to information for diverse audiences in
multiple languages and integrate the needed information in the information circle of
managing cultural heritage. In CrossCult, an innovative approach into adopting and
implementing CIDOC-CRM was proposed; the reflection terms used for the CCKB were
exploited in the most standardised, open and re-usable way to allow access to information for
people residing in different countries with various historical backgrounds and knowledge of
languages; the CCKB was also integrated in the cycle of developing new storytelling for the
same pilots and/or for new according to information needs. The data base is easily also
extendible to other languages and thus can become a multilingual database. The adoption of
the CCKB can lead to linkage of storytellings and thus museum artefacts of the different
venues that have adopted the same knowledge base. In this way, the linkage of venues and
cultural heritage collections is succeeded in a higher level that overcomes physical,
geographical barriers. Finally, new ways of interpreting and reflecting on common histories or
common elements of different cultures could emerge.

As knowledge managers, information professionals need to collect and promote information

to different audiences; manage knowledge repositories and facilitate flow and dissemination
of information; transform information into new products and/or new services. In CrossCult,
the CCKB allowed the transformation of information-data into meaningful reflections with
links and interconnections among concepts as well as among resources of various types. CCKB
also enable the link of different venues in various European countries through common
histories, common museum artefacts or differences in the same stories or artefacts found of
the same period. Storytelling was seeing as a way to enrich the knowledge repository with
new terms and interconnections as well as a mean to provide further cultural heritage
products and services to the same venues or provisioned ones. Finally, storytelling was also
the way to overcome geographical, physical barriers and allow the connection of same
historical backgrounds and of different historical periods with common elements.

Information professionals should embrace the role also of a subject librarian in terms of
serving as a liaison among information and historical data, among the data, metadata and
meaningful discovery of interpretations and interconnections among concepts; developing
new ways of presenting information deriving from metadata and linkage with other resources
to designated audiences and assist in the copyright clearance of the information used to meet
these purposes. In CrossCult, information professionals served as a liaison among the
application of international standards to accommodate the storytelling developed by
historical and humanities experts to allow interpretation and reflection on the historical
events. The development of the CCKB as well as the way reflection terms were incorporated
allowed the creation of new ways of presenting historical events and of addressing the
information needs of audiences. Finally, information professionals assisted on deciding which
information resources do have copyrights and how they could be cleared, especially using
specific licence schemes. Finally, they also assisted in identifying which external resources are
relevant to the storytelling and cultural heritage collections of the different venues and could
be used to further enrich the CCKB, storytelling as well as the users’ experience in a cultural
context.

7
Finally, information professionals in the context of CrossCult assisted in the further promotion
and dissemination of the research produced in the form of publications and/or databases. In
particular, they managed scholarly communication produced by the research team of the
project by uploading the metadata of the publications and datasets on designated
Institutional Repositories and promoting them in various ways on diverse means (i.e. website,
social media, newsletter). In an era, in which information is important when it is shared,
information professionals played an important role in further making known the research
developed in the CrossCult project by making it retrievable and accessible on different
databases and with various ways.

The roles information professionals adopted in CrossCult are also in accordance with the
highlights and opportunities reported by IFLA (2018). In particular, openness and reusability
are two of the key characteristics of the CCKB developed and further promoted in the context
of the project. It is also one of the main innovative results produced and shared with the
research community; cultural heritage products and services developed aim to serve the
cultural needs of their audiences globally. Technologies developed can be used by any
organization in any context to address the same information needs of having access to cultural
heritage information; digital innovation was adopted in all aspects of the project since four
applications and relevant digital games where developed to address the cultural heritage
information needs of the collaborative venues; partnerships and collaborations were
developed both within the consortium as well as with interested stakeholders namely
interested associated venues to further assist the adoption and promotion of the innovative
technologies, products and services developed within CorssCult; the final outcomes of the
project are committed not only to preserving the cultural heritage information held and
managed by the interested venues but also to allow continuous link with other external but
somehow relevant resources without any physical or geographical barriers and promote re-
interpretation of history and reflection from past to present.

Information professionals, taking part in a large scale, cultural heritage projects need to adopt
different roles as mentioned above and exploit different opportunities. Information
professionals are, of the most professions, flexible, adjustable and most of the times
committed to change. Therefore, adopting new roles and/or adjusting existing ones to new
information needs of their audiences/communities is not something unknown or that they
are not accustomed to it. It is part of addressing everyday needs and of staying relevant to
future developments.

However, above all information professionals need to efficiently and effectively collaborate
with the research team working on a project, coming from different disciplines. Collaboration
is a key element in EU H2020 projects but in all projects in general and the skill of working in
teams and have an intense sense of collaboration should be an integral asset of the
information professional skills and personality. Incorporating soft skills is an essential tool for
every information professional working in an international research team.

For such an interdisciplinary synergy to succeed, members need to some how find a way to
speak a common language, accept the differences that may arise among disciplines and
cultures, find common grounds of discussion, share the same vision about the project and
accept we all share the same goals, accept different opinions as challenges for promoting
innovation.

8
 4. Conclusions

Managing cultural heritage information is not an easy task. The challenges are many and relate
from advances to information and communication technologies, the emergence of new tools,
standards, ways of presenting information to coordination among researchers of different
disciplines towards a common goal. This paper aimed to address the different roles
information professionals adopt while participating in a cultural heritage project, using
CrossCult EU H2020 funded project in Cultural Heritage as a case study. It was shown that
information professionals, working in this project, adopted different roles for a variety of
reasons, however with the main view to meet the information needs of the CrossCult project.

Embracing the roles of information consultant, technology specialist, knowledge manager,

subject librarian, promoter of scholarly communication and dissemination of project related
information entails that information professionals were well equipped. They need to have
developed a set of important skills and competences in order to perform successfully their
roles. Skills and competences that range from soft (i.e. interpersonal skills, communications
etc.) to hard skills (i.e. computer, administration, project management skills etc.). Above all,
they need to understand and follow the developments in the international sphere regarding
the profession to discover ways of developing and offering innovative services and products.
In addition, to further suggest and propose innovative ways of developing new technology.

The development of these skills would further assist information professionals to take part in
large scale, international cultural heritage projects and most importantly work closely and
collaboratively with researchers from other disciplines. This will also allow them to
communicate on equal terms with others and share a common language with the
interdisciplinary research team.

Information professionals could also use the premises of a cultural centre and/or library to
further promote the initial findings of the project, and the results making them accessible to
wider audiences. They could also use the facilities of these premises to train the wide audience
on how to use the results of this research and thus further develop the skills and competences
of their users. Finally, they would assist in the re-use of the information by making the data
more accessible to everyone interested in this type of research.

5. Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by CrossCult: "Empowering reuse of digital cultural heritage in
context-aware crosscuts of European history", funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020
research and innovation program, under grant agreement No 693150.

6. References

Falser, Michael S. 2011. Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission : From Decay to Recovery.
IFLA. 2018. “IFLA -- Global Vision Report Summary.” 2018. https://www.ifla.org/node/11905.
Leary, Heather M, Kacy Lundstrom, and Pamela Martin. 2012. “Copyright Solutions for
Institutional Repositories: A Collaboration with Subject Librarians.” Journal of Library
Innovation 3 (1): 100–110. http://www.libraryinnovation.org/article/view/166.
Rooi, Hazel van, and Retha Snyman. 2007. “A Content Analysis of Literature Regarding

9
 Knowledge Management Opportunities for Librarians.” Aslib Proceedings 78 (3): 261–
71.
Seifert, Christin, Michael Granitzer, Werner Bailer, Thomas Orgel, Louis Gantner, Roman
Kern, Hermann Ziak, Albin Petit, Jörg Schlötterer, and Stefan Zwicklbauer. 2017.
“Ubiquitous Access to Digital Cultural Heritage.” Journal on Computing and Cultural
Heritage 10 (1): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1145/3012284.
Vassilakaki, Evgenia, and Valentini Moniarou-Papaconstantinou. 2015. “A Systematic
Literature Review Informing Library and Information Professionals’ Emerging Roles.”
New Library World 116 (1/2): 37–66.
Wikipedia. 2018a. “Cultural Heritage Management.” 2018.
———. 2018b. “Information and Communications Technology.” 2018.
Ruthven, I. and Chowdhury, G.G., 2015. Cultural heritage information: access and
management. London: Facet Publishing.

10

View publication stats