User:Sneha (CIS-A2K)/P2022

The Digital Transition in Cultural Heritage Practices in India

The cultural heritage sector in India has seen much change and development in the last decade, especially with the advent of the internet and digital media technologies. This transition from analogue to digital spaces, and to experiences of arts and culture mediated through digital platforms however continues to be a complex one. Apart from developments in technologies of preservation, curation and outreach, there still remain persistent issues related to access, infrastructure and linguistic barriers in this sector. Intellectual property rights, open access and privacy issues have also emerged as important concerns for cultural institutions looking to make their collections accessible to a wider public. Particularly over the last two years with limited physical access to cultural heritage spaces due to the pandemic, these challenges have only been further exacerbated. These concerns are seen broadly across the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector, as well as efforts undertaken by collaborative, open knowledge platforms such as Wikimedia projects.

This short-term research study draws upon some of these observations from emerging practices in the GLAM sector,work in areas such as digital humanities and learnings from our ongoing research on Wikimedia projects. It will examine changes in museumization practices with the advent of digital technologies, with a specific focus on the growth of virtual museums in the Indian context. Virtual or digital museums have been a recent phenomenon in the Indian cultural landscape, which have gained a lot of purchase particularly in the wake of the pandemic, with several large state and private cultural memory institutions now making a part of their collections available online. The study will adopt qualitative methods, including interviews and surveys, to document and better understand some of these infrastructural and conceptual challenges and opportunities of digitization. It will focus in particular on linguistic and technological barriers related to digitization and open access policies and practices, including aspects such as structured metadata and curation of digital artifacts. It will therefore examine the affordances of digitization in enabling better access, diversity and use of cultural heritage content, especially from the perspective of open knowledge platforms such as Wikimedia projects. The study will look to consolidate these learnings in a set of recommendations and smaller outputs that may inform work on Wikimedia projects engaged with GLAM.

Consultation on Research on Wikimedia projects in India

In addition to this, as a follow up to the needs assessment undertaken the previous year, a research consultation is planned in order to gather inputs from community members on projects underway in communities, emerging areas of interest as well as priority areas of work. It will seek to develop a better understanding of awareness and engagement with research in the Indian language communities, methods and forms, as well as explore areas of collaboration and capacity-building.