Analysing citizen-birthed data on minor heritage assets: models, promises and challenges

Abstract

The citizen science paradigm and the practices related to it have for the last decade called a wide attention, beyond academics, in many application fields with as a result a significant impact on discipline-specific research processes and on information sciences as such. Indeed, in the specific context of minor heritage (tangible and intangible cultural heritage assets that are left aside from large official heritage programmes), citizen-birthed contributions appear as a major opportunity in the harvesting and enrichment of data sets. With more content made available on the net by a variety of local actors, we may have reached a moment when collecting and analysing spatio-historical information appears “easier”, with citizens acting as potential (and legitimate) sensors. But is it really “easier”? And if so, at what cost? Having a closer look on practical challenges behind the curtain can avoid turning the above-mentioned opportunity into a lost one. This contribution discusses feedbacks from a research initiative aimed at better circumscribing the difficulties one has to foresee if wanting to harvest and visualise pieces of data on minor heritage collections and then to derive from them spatial, temporal and thematic knowledge. The contribution focuses on four major aspects: a feedback on the information and on the information available, a description grid for factors of imperfection to be anticipated, visual solutions we have experimented in order to support analytical tasks, and lessons learnt in terms of relations between academics and information providers.