New approaches to Art and visual culture
CHArt Nineteenth Annual Conference
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CONVERGENT PRACTICES New approaches to Art and visual culture |
Veronica Davis Perkins, Middlesex University, UK
Careering Along the Heritage Highway
The speed of growth in digital technology has turned cultural heritage from being a contained, “stately” interest, into the worldwide pursuit of instant culture and a society which demands “I want it all. I want it now.” (Laura B Spencer, 2001)
This paper investigates the digitisation of historic photograph collections as an exemplar of this process. The urgency to digitise “world culture” has thrown up a plethora of problems for custodians of cultural objects and has created a new “digital community.” Is digitisation saving these collections from neglect and loss, as is aspired to by projects such as UNESCO’s Memory of the World, and the Government’s New Opportunities Fund, or are important cultural and preservation factors being overlooked in the rush to digitise? We look at the convergence of these traditional roles with new technology and the effect of digital libraries on future research.
Based on the results of current research into existing processes, the paper examines what is happening in the field as this great sweep of the world’s heritage collections becomes selected, edited, and manipulated for digitisation.