A contribution for the dissemination of cultural heritage content to a wider public

Abstract

Digital resources are becoming an important tool for research in all the domains related to cultural heritage. Scholars have special requirements that need to be matched when developing digital library and digital archive systems that are to be used as tools to carry out scientific research. After having designed and developed a digital library application called IPSA as a system for researchers in illuminated manuscripts, we investigated how the digital library can be evaluated by non-domain users. Our goal was to highlight the overlaps and the differences in the user requirements between specialists, who use the digital archive to fulfill their research goal, and non-domain users, who interact with the digital library system because of a general interest about its content. The results have been used to re-engineer the digital library system and extend the functions of the digital library application in order to open up its use also to non specialists. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.