Applying an implicit recommender system in the preparation of visits to cultural heritage places

Abstract

The visit to cultural places can be an enormous pleasure, where visitors are driven to see and explore historical or contemporary objects. The same journey can also be fastidious when the visitor is taken to lengthy walks, unwanted collections or the objects archive is too large. For many of us, a visit should be something limited in time, showing a variety of things of our own interest. Information systems and in particular mobile devices can play a fundamental role to get us close to that objective by collecting information used to feed recommender systems. This paper studies the use of an implicit recommender system to propose which points of interest should be explored in cultural heritage places. In its present form, the recommender system, to be supported on data acquired by a mobile application, suggests artworks or artists supported on the user’s history. Experimental results are presented, showing the effectiveness of the method.