Narrating the Story of a Digitized Old Historical Map

Abstract

We describe the process to create an interactive digital artifact out of a physically born material that would assist the interactive cultural heritage experience, as well as the pedagogical practice through artifact-oriented learning and digital storytelling. Our main aim is to reconceptualize, reuse and reintroduce physically born materials that were previously only known to a small group of scholars, students, and specialists to the general public. In our pilot study, we present a graphical interactive map which is an enriched depiction of the Battle of Lützen (1632) that includes geographical information, cultural products inspired by the depicted event (e.g., paintings, music, museum artifacts, documentaries), technological artifacts illustrated at the map, and elements to assist the digital narration (e.g., buttons, captions, sound and text). Our proposed low-cost solution demands no programming skills at all, is based mostly on open-source tools, and requires -ideally- only a touch-screen. The ease of implementing this solution enables it to be applied in a plethora of digitized artifacts and be used at schools, libraries, museums, and universities.