Abstract:

The paradigm of digital cultural ecosystems appears to respond to the growing willingness to share the wealth of cultural resources and continuous research and study of cultural treasures. These systems virtually assemble various digital collections, archives, virtual museums, digital libraries and cultural heritage sites in order to facilitate the access to their resources, bringing cultural content to new audiences in novel ways. The digital ecosystems are meant to connect people, data, processes and things by the shared use of digital platforms. The idea is to create a collection of flexible services that can quickly be adapted to the dynamically changing needs. From the users’ point of view, an ecosystem refers to enrichment and more convenient use of different communication channels on which they access and publish content. This paper presents the activities for development of models for effective use, continuing development, research and delivery of digital cultural resources in digital cultural ecosystems for learning purposes following the grand vision, good practices and achievements of the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities. Major digital sources related to European history and culture are fragmented in various repositories, libraries, and collections. This raises the question of how users-learners can access heterogeneous sources. The problem of how to utilize all available knowledge that is distributed over multiple locations and stored on a myriad of digital storage is challenging. The number of cultural artifacts is increasing rapidly and there is also growing demand for simple access and better usability and personalization. We are working on an innovative model for the creation of new knowledge and we address the problems of gathering, processing, analyzing, visualizing massive amount of data targeting education purposes. We are developing feasible methods of learning analysis, understanding, interpretation, context-dependent use and sharing of content in ecosystems for digital culture in new ways and through means for fuller delivery of knowledge to digital collections and archives of cultural artefacts.

Keywords:

Digital Cultural Ecosystems, Education, Learning Analysis, Context-dependent Use, Personalization.