Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Re-Locating Meaning In Heritage Archives: A Call For Participatory Heritage Databases, Angela M. Labrador, Elizabeth S. Chilton

Angela M Labrador

While the use of online digital archives is increasing in the various heritage-related fields, there are significant problems with traditional digital heritage databases. First, these databases often revolve around collecting and presenting information provided by domain experts and do little to engage end users in the interpretative process. In doing so they centralize the meaning making process and limit authority and, thus, access to non-expert users. Second, they presume a single, knowable community or heritage audience; and third, they presume a single interpretation of an information object, or at least a consensual interpretation from a larger, static group of stakeholders. …