As the activities of preserving digital assets and providing access to them have become key functions for digital collection management at memory organisations, the question of user engagement has perhaps been less explored amidst other challenges. This paper will discuss three different strategies implemented at Aalto University, Finland. The strategies include, first, integrating digital cultural heritage into information literacy training; second, developing an online guide for visual resources including digital cultural heritage; and third, inviting graduating students to participate in an artist residency for making an in-depth exploration of the university’s archival and cultural heritage resources. The experience of direct cooperation with academic programmes to provide opportunities for students to learn how to use archival collections and primary sources for research and creative projects has also been highly positive.

Moreover, the paper will briefly discuss how digital cultural heritage could be further examined in information literacy research as an information source with some distinct information behaviours that require a literacy skills definition and a set of competencies of their own. Digital cultural heritage literacy is closely related but distinguishable from information literacy skills that have traditionally focused on library resources.

Does Digital Cultural Heritage Need Promotion?

The investment in mass digitisation efforts by libraries, archives, and museums has resulted in students and researchers having now access to millions of digital heritage objects online (e.g. texts, images, audiovisual content, and artworks). Simultaneously, users have increasing availability to digital content on multiple media sharing and social media platforms. As information specialists, we have taught information literacy (IL) classes for over 15 years in the higher education context. Over time, we have become aware of the low awareness of digital cultural heritage collections amongst students and even postgraduate researchers. In particular, students in humanities, art, architecture, and design often require a variety of information sources in their work, written assignments, and creative projects. They research trends and phenomena in art, architecture, urban planning, and design history, to name a few fields. Teachers also make explorations into visual content for inspiration and illustration.

While there is a definite need for visual information, there seems to be a gap in knowledge about digital cultural heritage as a potential source. When students approaching their first research assignments are asked how they find visual material for their research or creative projects, they name popular image-sharing and social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, or TikTok. The image and video content may be highly relevant on these platforms for some information needs, but the platforms are inadequate as sources of trustworthy, high-quality content that is licensed and also supports research into the provenance and context of cultural phenomena. Digital cultural heritage platforms such as Europeana, which aggregates access to millions of images from European cultural organisations, are not commonly mentioned as being part of these users’ usual information-seeking routines. Without fail, the students express surprise at the resources available to them once they are introduced to digital cultural heritage as an information source and state that they wish they had known about them earlier.

The digitisation of collections and provision of online access are necessary steps towards safeguarding both preservation and access. Preservation and access should, however, be at least equal in terms of investment. Agosti et al. (2018) take access slightly further, stating, ‘[i]mportant though preservation undoubtedly is, access is more important still. Indeed, the act of conservation implies a need for access – we may access material that we do not bother to preserve, but we do not, in a world of limited and diminishing resources, preserve what we do not wish to access’ (Agosti et al., 2018, p. 353). Pettersson (2022) has also observed that cultural heritage and primary resource collections held by university libraries and archives are rich, valuable resources that are unknown to most students, and these resources challenge the remits of traditional IL training in terms of curatorship and pedagogy. Cooperation between library and archival instruction has, to date, been limited. Memory organisations are still working in siloes of the library, museum, and archive, although the boundaries are blurred for users of cultural heritage platforms such as Europeana. Opening up digital heritage collections should also mean having some strategies for supporting user training and user engagement with the collections.

Preserving and Accessing Cultural Heritage at Aalto University

Aalto University is a multidisciplinary university based in the capital region of Espoo, Finland. The University has six schools specialising in topics such as arts, design, architecture, business and economics, engineering, physics, and computer sciences. A distinctive feature of the university is its various practice-based academic programmes. For instance, in the art, design, and architecture programmes, the learning and research outputs include practical design projects, exhibitions, and competitions where the learning outputs are, for instance, objects of fashion, visual design, architectural design, or product design, even complete gaming environments or other ‘virtual experiences’. This focus on practice-based learning influences both the information needs of the students as well as the outputs that are preserved.

Students need a wide range of information resources from which to learn and with which to create new ideas. The Aalto University Learning Centre provides a library and special collections to facilitate these competencies, including access to image databases in arts and humanities. Students in the design and visual arts programmes conduct visual research by exploring historic images to generate visual ideas and study trend developments and cultural phenomena. For example, architects look for images of certain periods, architects, and styles. Likewise, fashion designers look for images of certain styles, designers, and types of garments, while designers look for materials, colours, patterns, typography, and inspiration images of all kinds. Digital collections from memory organisations have a wealth of resources for these kinds of requirements.

In addition to the Learning Centre, the University Records Management also manages cultural heritage and primary source collections and promotes their use to students. The Archives is responsible for capturing, preserving, and providing access to the University’s heritage and supports access to the material online on the Archives Finna platform.^[1] In addition to official records and documents, the preserved material includes artistic activities related to theses and dissertations; student exhibitions; and other major artistic activities, such as images from fashion catwalks and design competitions. The materials are part of the university’s legacy and also an information source for students. The Archives has a long-standing cooperation with degree programmes, whose members regularly visit to learn about accessing, using, and making creative explorations of the archive collections. Students first engage with the University’s own digital archives and collections – and often with archive collections and digital cultural heritage as information sources, in general – in this context.

Digital Cultural Heritage and Information Literacy

Information literacy training usually provided by academic libraries focuses on the skills required in the process of gaining information. Commonly adopted learning objectives for this training, named Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, were established in 2016 by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). In the Framework, information literacy is defined as ‘the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning’ (ACRL, 2016, p. 3). A skilled user of information is understood to ‘look beyond format when selecting resources to use’ as the process of information creation will today result in different kinds of formats and modes of delivery (ACRL, 2016, p. 5).

The Framework for Visual Literacy in Higher Education was published by the ACRL in 2022 to broaden to applicability of the Framework for Information Literacy to visual information formats. Given these standards, visual literacy is not seen as relevant only to the students in the arts but as highly multidisciplinary and applicable to all ‘citizens in today’s image-saturated society’ (ACRL, 2022, p. 2). Learning skills in visual literacy allows individuals to develop abilities to engage with the rapidly evolving technological landscape where visual information is created, manipulated, and, also, machine-generated. In 2020, the concept of cultural heritage literacy also began appearing in IL literature. For example, Öztemiz (2020) studied the cultural heritage skills of academics and found four core competencies for cultural heritage literacy: discovering and accessing, analysing and evaluating, using and creating, and sharing. It appears that the definitions of information literacy are, therefore, becoming broader and more inclusive of different kinds of literacies of information sources.

A potential area for further research is to explore the impacts of information literacy training, which has traditionally centred on text-based information sources within the library context, and to understand how this training may need to be adapted to encompass a wider range of information formats. Information literacy training may increase its impact and relevance if it is modifiable for a heterogeneous range of information formats (e.g. text, image, data, archival resources). Overlapping themes can also easily be found in the core learning objectives of critical and ethical use of information regardless of format. Taking a more integrated approach beyond the siloes of the library, archive, or museum will help learners make better use of digital cultural heritage as ‘unlocking any values in mass-digitised heritage data will require economic investment in skills’ (Terras et al., 2021, p. 7).

Strategies to Promote Digital Cultural Heritage

The raising of awareness about digital cultural heritage as an information source at Aalto University has been assisted, on the one hand, by the Learning Centre having a long-standing IL training programme and, on the other, by the presence of some dedicated activities and cooperation that focus on visual resources and archival material. This section introduces the strategies and practical implementations: the integration of digital cultural heritage into IL training and cooperation with degree programmes, an online guide for visual resources, and the artist residency for graduating students.

1. Integration to information skills training

Students attending IL training at any degree level have an opportunity to learn about visual resources and, through that, digital cultural heritage in a formal training setting. A course named ‘Visual Resources and Image Retrieval’ has been offered by information specialists, and it typically covers the following:

• Image retrieval in the context of academic learning and research
• Introduction to digital cultural heritage
• Image databases and digital cultural heritage platforms
• Strategies for using image search engines
• Evaluation of reliability and quality
• Image metadata including provenance and context
• Image licenses and copyright issues
• Image citation practices

Components from this formal course are also often integrated into various course programmes that fall under the common themes of visual research skills for thesis writers, remix and heritage hacking for designers, and working with cultural heritage and primary sources.

In each training, regardless of the course level or programme, large aggregated digital cultural heritage portals such as Europeana, Finna, Artstor, and Digital Public Library of America are introduced to students and researchers. Furthermore, the university’s archive and special collections are introduced in instances where there is often an opportunity to explore special and rare originals, to help students understand that there is also a wealth of primary resources that are not in digital format. Students learn about the different kinds of cultural heritage, understand why this knowledge may be useful to their study skills, and focus especially on finding high-quality visual resources and navigating the often-troublesome copyright questions and citations.

2. Visual Resources Online guide for self-learning and reference

To enable also self-paced online learning, the Aalto University Learning Centre has collaborated with the University of the Arts Library and the Aalto University’s legal advisors in the ImagOA – Open Science and Use of Images project.^[2] The guide provides information and infographics on the use of visual resources considering the practice of open science and culture. The guide also highlights resources that have been openly licensed as many cultural organisations have adopted OpenGLAM principles to ‘strengthen their brand, disseminate content and encourage innovation’ (Terras et al., 2021, p. 2). The guide contains a curated collection of image databases and digital cultural heritage platforms; information on citation practices; Creative Commons licenses; permitted uses of images on educational materials, theses, publications and artistic activities; and photographs as personal data.

The guide was published on the LibGuides platform in Finnish, Swedish, and English with open CC-BY licensing and has, hence, been widely adopted and modified by other Finnish University Libraries for their own use. The guide uniquely brings together digital cultural heritage collections, information on copyright issues and good citation practices. The guide is also used as an instructional tool in IL training and provides a reference after training to make further discoveries with the resources.

3. Artist residency for a graduating student

In addition to efforts on training and learning resources on digital cultural heritage, the university’s archival resources have also facilitated creative work. A residency programme is provided for a graduating student or researcher to make an active exploration of the university archive’s collections with the help of and instructions given by archivists and the information specialist. The residency covers introductions to collections, in-depth interviews and discussions with the specialists about the topics chosen by the residency holder, and the allocation of a physical or digital exhibition space for a final project outcome.

The residency provides visibility for the residency holder’s final thesis work and creative achievements. For example, Anjori Tandon from the Visual Communication Design degree programme attended the artist residency and successfully completed her MA thesis in 2023 exploring the use of AI generative methods with archival materials (Tandon, 2023). She was inspired by the Aalto University Archive’s rare book collection and, specifically, the archive’s collection of richly illustrated loose-leaf albums from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tandon selected some of these prints and created 3D digital models with generative AI methods using openly licensed archival resources.^[3] In her words, the residency and the archival material she explored ‘provided a significant source of ideas, styles, and cultural contexts that counteract the repetitive character of the current visual design scenario [and it] opened my eyes to the possibility of using archives for visual design’ (A. Tandon, personal communication, June 9, 2024).

Conclusion

We compete for the attention of students and researchers in the information- and media-saturated culture. There could be more strategic user engagement planning for increasing the awareness of digital cultural heritage, for example, through formal user training, building online guides and reference tools, or facilitating creative use. The feedback from user training, which integrates digital cultural heritage training into formal information literacy classes, particularly encourages the understanding that students appreciate a wider view of information sources. After each session, there is a brief reflection where students discuss how the new resources may affect their future information-seeking behaviour. They often reflect on how the training has opened their eyes to entirely new resources available to them. Despite encouraging feedback, it should be acknowledged that the approach at Aalto University depends on the specialist training skills available and the continued allocation of formal teaching into tightly scheduled course curricula.

We have a task on our hands in upskilling ourselves and our users. Raising awareness of digital cultural heritage may mean crossing some professional boundaries. Memory organisations provide access to digital cultural heritage often in aggregated platforms that blur the boundaries of the archive, library, and museum for the user. This method is effective for memory organisations and provides real advantages for the user. Information professionals should, therefore, investigate how to broaden their knowledge and skills in different kinds of information formats, cultural organisations, and information literacies. The role of the librarian and archivist may also shift from relatively passively providing collections and information to actively planning and facilitating user engagements that advance skills and competencies. This shift will be mutually beneficial for those who attend and those who provide the engagement.

References

Abstract

This paper discusses the significance of user engagement in preserving and providing access to digital cultural heritage in memory organisations, with a focus on strategies implemented at Aalto University in Finland. The paper outlines three key strategies: integrating digital cultural heritage into information literacy training, developing an online guide for visual resources, and inviting graduating students to participate in an artist residency for an in-depth exploration of archival resources. It emphasises the need for increased awareness of digital cultural heritage among students, particularly those in humanities, art, architecture, and design programmes, as well as the potential consequences of a lack of knowledge about digital cultural heritage. The essay also touches upon the evolving definitions of information literacy and the need for broader skills encompassing diverse information formats, including text, image, data, and archival resources. The user engagement initiatives at Aalto University aim to raise awareness of digital cultural heritage, provide interfaces for learning opportunities, and facilitate creative engagement with the resources. This paper emphasises the significance of user engagement planning and upskilling in digital cultural heritage, as well as the evolving role of information professionals in facilitating user engagements.

Keywords

Digital cultural heritage; User engagement; Higher education; Archival materials; Primary resources; Visual resources; Information literacy; Visual literacy; Artist residencies