Collection building amongst heritage amateurs

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.*Related content and download information correct at time of download. Abstract Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to gather an overview of different research fields that study collection building amongst heritage amateurs (e.g. amateur archaeologists, family and local historians, etc.). Design/methodology/approach -First, the paper will define the term heritage amateur and then identify possible fields in which these groups and their collection building have been studied. A snowball procedure was used to collect material for the study. Findings -While there is an overlap between some of the subjects and fields examined, there is a potential for more collaboration resulting in a deeper understanding of collection building amongst heritage amateurs.Research limitations/implications -The term heritage amateur is not widely used, and the identification and collection of material for the review rely on the definition and understanding of this term and the groups included under it. Practical implications -This review of existing literature will benefit researchers and practitioners in the fields of education, information science, museums, libraries and archival studies, as well as the multidisciplinary area of heritage studies. Social implications -There is a growing institutional and political interest in making digital heritage collections available to the general public, and this paper argues that an important part of this is understanding how heritage amateurs already do this. Originality/value -This paper will connect narrow interest areas such as participatory heritage or serious leisure and show how their angles on heritage amateurs differ and compare.

Finding a place for genealogy and family history in the digital humanities

“…These activities coincide with the methods of digital humanities, in which teams require trust and harmonization between individual and group goals (Siemens, 2009). Particularly within galleries, libraries, archives and museums (Roued-Cunliffe, 2017), crowdsourcing is also used to complete projects, such as the World War I Operation War Diary (Terras, 2016), and the National Archives Crowdsourcing Pilot Project (Kemp, 2013), a project that is useful for genealogists and historians alike.…”

“…Metadata standards have since improved through the adoption of the Text Encoding Initiative, which enhances the ability for digital humanists to process data by computerized applications (Pierazzo, 2016) through conformant data to markup texts (Flanders and Jannidis, 2016). Roued-Cunliffe (2017) noted that genealogists frequently collect and manage data in a digital repository, attaching information in the form of metadata (e.g. dates, places, and names), as well as transcribing texts and adding descriptions to photographs.…”