REQUIREMENTS ON SYSTEM DESIGN TO INCREASE UNDERSTANDING AND VISIBILITY OF CULTURAL HERITAGE

This contribution to the Handbook of research on "technologies and cultural heritage" proposes motivated solutions to approach the well known challenge of using technology to increase visibility and understanding of cultural heritage sites. The authors report on their activity started in the year 2000 with a project addressing the needs of archaeological sites and specialized museums such as "city museums" and "history of science museums" - (MUSE, Italian National Research Program on Cultural Heritage PARNASO (2000-03), and continued within the “Mobile and Ambient Systems” Work Group of the European Network of Excellence on Open Cultural Heritage (EPOCH, 2004-2008). Future research directions are analyzed and the vision of using interoperability platforms to distribute on the territory location specific, preference based and, situation adapted content through multivendor heterogeneous devices, preserving the IP rights of the individual cultural heritage institutions is presented. In this respect the ongoing experience on the interoperability platform being developed within the framework of the European Joint Technology Initiative on embedded systems (ARTEMIS project SOFIA, 2009-11) is reported.