Productive user contributions in digital media applications for museums and cultural heritage

Comparable to its role as the main cost factor in the media industry, the production of content rises to a challenge for museums. In particular small and medium scale european museums with limited funding and an often low level of staff coverage face this new demand and strive therefore for alternative production resources. While productive user contributions can be seen as such an alternative resource, user contributions are at the same time a manifestation for a different mode of interacting with content. In contrast to the dominantly passive role of audiences as receivers of information, productive contributions emerge as a mode of content exploration and become in this regard influential for museum mediation strategies. As applications of user contributions in museums and cultural heritage are currently rather seldom, a broader perspective towards user contributions becomes necessary to understand its specific challenges, opportunities and limitations.

Productive user contributions can be found in a growing number of applications on the Internet where they either complement or fully substitute corporate content production processes. While the Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia written entirely by a group of users and open to contributions by all its users, is one of the most prominent examples for this practice, several more applications emerged or are being developed. In consequence user contributions are about to become a powerful source for the production of content in digital media environments.

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