User versus institutional perspectives of metadata and searching: an investigation of online access to cultural heritage content during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Findings from log analyses of user interactions with the digital content of two large national cultural heritage institutions (National Museums of Scotland and National Galleries of Scotland) during the COVID-19 lockdown highlighted limited engagement compared to pre-pandemic levels. Just 8% of users returned to these sites, whilst the average time spent, and number of pages accessed, were generally low. This prompted a user study to investigate the potential mismatch between the way content was indexed by the curators and searched for by users. A controlled experiment with ten participants, involving two tasks and a selected set of digital cultural heritage content, explored: (a) how does the metadata assigned by cultural heritage organisations meet or differ from the search needs of users? and (b) how can the search strategies of users inform the search pathways employed by cultural heritage organisations? Findings reveal that collection management standards like Spectrum encourage a variety of different characteristics to be considered when developing metadata, yet much of the content is left to the interpretations of curators. Rather, user- and context-specific guidelines could be beneficial in ensuring the aspects considered most important by consumers are indexed, thereby producing more relevant search results. A user-centred approach to designing cultural heritage websites would help to improve an individual’s experience when searching for information. However, a process is needed for institutions to form a concrete understanding of who their target users are before developing features and designs to suit their specific needs and interests.

Assessing the Long-COVID Impact on Heritage Organisations

“…Website pages saw an initial reduction in online visits when physical sites closed, as people were not looking at opening hours or similar visitor information [145]. Even then, website visits were usually a few seconds short [146]; the use of collection pages and databases, however, used for research by academics, students and general public was higher during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic use [145]. The online retail sales increased during the lockdowns and now could reach worldwide audiences [44].…”

“…Digital engagement, therefore, needs to digitally include excluded audiences [156]. It requires a plurality of media to reach audiences, and to reflect the plurality of art and audiences [145]. Visual content for example, can be more easily understood by most people, but needs to be supplemented to be fully inclusive [46].…”

“…The digital engagement being more accessible but also less tangible, is likely to be a manufactured individual experience, instead of a physical 'wellinformed expression of collective and civilizational memory' [82] (p. 471). Metadata should be used thoughtfully, to create more user-friendly websites and content [145] alongside a considerate use of metadata in audience development and to inform the development of virtual reality and artificial intelligence [42].…”