Preserving our Past with Toys of the Future

This paper presents the initial outcomes of a key scoping study undertaken to explore the role of augmented reality and motion detecting technologies in the context of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) for museums related environments. Initial prototypes are in the form of an interactive infrared camera based application for children […]

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Wathaurung use technology to take control of their cultural heritage

For over 25,000 years, the land around Ballarat, Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula has been inhabited by the Wathaurung people. Traditionally, important cultural knowledge was passed down the generations through word of mouth. Today, a simple yet groundbreaking piece of mapping software is allowing the Wathaurung to pinpoint and record […]

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Cultural gaming: Iñupiat stories come alive in “Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa)”

“A clear question, then, is can this powerful new medium be harnessed as a new platform for passing along wisdom from generation to generation in a culturally appropriate, engaging format?” Young people of every generation – to some degree – pull away from the mores, ideals, and traditions of their […]

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Australian Aboriginal Virtual Heritage

Cultural knowledge is a central tenant of identity for Aboriginal people and it is vitally important that the preservation of heritage values happens. Digital Songlines is a project that seeks to achieve this and was initiated as a way to develop the tools for recording cultural heritage knowledge in a […]

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Journal of Interactive Humanities

The humanities have begun to embrace digital technology as a means of expressing scholarship and thought. However, it has become apparent that humanities content cannot simply be transferred into these new media. The humanities may be making the mistake it has observed of other fields: “Part of the problem seems […]

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Story Guided Virtual Cultural Heritage Applications

Virtual cultural heritage applications, particularly virtual museums, nowadays include various forms of storytelling. Every object, site or artifact is better perceived and understood through the adjoining story. Interactive applications naturally request the storytelling to become interactive as well. This paper describes the concepts of interactive digital storytelling in our virtual […]

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Ethnocomputing: Using ICT to Preserve the Culture of the People of North-Rift Region of Kenya

The impact and interaction of ICT and African culture is a critical issue as African nations position themselves to reap the benefits of ICT for development. African nations have different attitudes towards cultural regeneration and dissemination as the continent struggles to address the ambiguous role and position of culture as […]

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Towards effective management & preservation of digital cultural heritage resources

Abstract In today’s world of digital technologies, cultural heritage institutions, particularly in developed countries, are seeking ways to create national digital memories for the future of the citizenry. However, rapidly developing technologies and their concomitant technological obsolescence put future memories at risk. The challenge is enormous in developing countries that, […]

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Participatory Cultural Heritage: A Tale of Two Institutions’ Use of Social Media

The purpose of this study is to examine how and to what extent cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) are currently using social media to create a culture of participation around their digital collections and services. An environmental scan of New Zealand CHIs with a social media initiative was conducted and four […]

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Enduring Cultures – A Socio Cultural Toolkit

In the mad rush of modernization and the blind aping of Western manners, the East Indians (Roman Catholic ethnic group from the west coast of India) are slowly but steadily losing count of some of their most cherished customs and conventions, and are at the risk of being lost forever. […]

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Creating a Social Serious Game: an interdisciplinary experience among computer scientists and artists from UNLP faculties

This article describes the interdisciplinary work carried out by teachers and students of the Faculties of Fine Arts and Informatics in La Plata city, to develop a serious game for social networks related with Argentine native peoples. The game presented is a serious video game, innovative for social sciences, which […]

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Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)

Special thanks to Laurie Taylor with the University of Florida (laurien@ufl.edu) for suggesting this resource. The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean, and community. As a digital library, dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean […]

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Indigenous Community Stories

About Indigenous Community Stories Indigenous Community Stories records Western Australia’s Indigenous heritage, cultural and historical stories using future-proof, high definition digital video technology and professional film crews. The initiative aims to record 100 Indigenous oral histories, so they can be viewed by future generations as well as creating invaluable records […]

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National Digital Repository of South Africa

The National Digital Repository is organised into four sections: ART  |  CULTURES  |  INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE  |  MUSIC Vision National Digital Repository serves to collect, preserve, promote and disseminate South Africa’s cultural heritage. It is also meant to reinforce the national imperatives of fostering national identity and social cohesion. By its nature […]

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Digital heritage in a Melanesian context: authenticity, integrity and ancestrality from the other side of the digital divide

This article examines how digital heritage, in the form of 3D digital objects, fits into particular discourses around identity, ancestrality and cultural transmission in Melanesia. Through an ethnographic analysis of digital heritage use amongst the Nalik community in New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), it demonstrates how digital heritage is understood […]

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Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal

This portal is a gateway to the cultural materials of Plateau peoples that are held in Washington State University’s Libraries, Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections (MASC), the Museum of Anthropology and by national donors. The collections represented here have been chosen and curated by tribal consultants working in cooperation with […]

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Chuck a Copyright on It: Dilemmas of Digital Return and the Possibilities for Traditional Knowledge Licenses and Labels

Abstract: This article focuses on the creation of an innovate network of licenses and labels delivered through an accessible, educational, and informative digital platform aimed specifically at the complex intellectual property needs of Indigenous peoples, communities, and collectives wishing to manage, maintain, and preserve their digital cultural heritage. The Traditional […]

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A Participatory Approach to Define User Requirements of a Platform for Intangible Cultural Heritage Education

In the last years the protection and safeguarding of cultural heritage has become a key issue of European cultural policy and this applies not only to tangible artefacts (monuments, sites, etc.), but also to intangible cultural expressions. The i-Treasures project focuses on some Intangible Cultural Heritages (ICH) and investigates whether […]

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Revitalizing Culture through Gaming: “Boundary Objects” and Properness in the Design of a Virtual Reality Game System

The Digital Songlines Environment (DSE) is a virtual reality game system aimed at preserving and promoting Australian Aboriginal heritage, arts and culture. The system features a realistic virtual landscape with local flora and fauna, embedding oral histories as well as mythological stories within its narratives and story line. Similar to […]

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Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Peoples

Traditional knowledge is an important element of the intellectual and cultural heritage of indigenous peoples. It reflects their social and historical identity and significantly contributes to the future well-being and sustainable development of these peoples. In 2007, the L’auravetl’an Information & Education Network of Indigenous Peoples (LIENIP) organized a series […]

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Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative

From the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative website: Hosted by the Department of Anthropology in partnership MATRIX: The Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences, the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative is a platform for interdisciplinary scholarly collaboration and communication in the domain of Cultural Heritage Informatics at Michigan State University. In addition, the initiative strives […]

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Keeping Country: a web-based approach to Indigenous outreach in cultural heritage management

Cultural heritage management (CHM) of Indigenous places is the dominant area of professional practice in Australian archaeology, yet relatively few Indigenous Australians take up a career in the sector. The internet is providing new and effective avenues for Indigenous outreach programmes. This paper describes a self-contained, web-enabled, free-to-user cultural heritage […]

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Folklore 2.0: Preservation Through Innovation

The very cultural heritage that gives indigenous peoples their identity, now far more than in the past, is under real or potential assault from those who would gather it up, strip away its honored meanings, convert it to a product, and sell it. Each time that happens the heritage itself […]

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Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) Project

The Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) Project is an international, multidisciplinary research project examining intellectual property (IP)-related issues that are emerging within the realm of heritage, especially those affecting Indigenous peoples. These include complex and often difficult questions about who has rights to and responsibilities relating to use […]

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From Oral Tradition to Digital Collectives: Information Access and Technology in Contemporary Native American Culture

For people who may live both physically and culturally distant from the majority culture in their immediate environment, information technology can provide a boost toward accessing and documenting their own heritage. As early adopters of the Web, Native Americans began using the Internet for e-commerce and cultural outreach in the […]

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