Internet is changing our daily life in many different aspects: from human communication and networking, work modalities, creation and sharing of content, up to how we use free time and hobbies. The cultural and humanists communities are not excluded from these changes: new architectures and radically different paradigms arise continuously forcing a deep rethinking of traditional roles and tasks. The focus is not on technology but on real benefits and concrete opportunities, as well as on the limits and risks, for both users and institutions. In particular for a very long term vision the user point of view must be the starting point for any digital policy and strategy.

The long term preservation of the content of a digital repository is a challenge for all professions that rely on continuing accessibility to accurate and authentic sources. Undoubtedly, the requirements and constraints for such preservation are dependent on the application domain. In particular, archival material requires particular attention to issues such as trustworthiness, accountability, evidentiary use, moral and legal rights, and privacy. However, increasingly also non archival materials are falling under similar requirements and constraints. So, one of the key questions regarding digital preservation becomes: what are the lessons that the managers of digital repositories of all kinds can learn from digital archivists? This presentation will use examples from the InterPARES 3 case studies to illustrate common problems and pitfalls as well as common solutions.

Analogue technologies are not eternal and so the only way to preserve our culture is to digitise that and then to migrate following technology developments. But digitising cultural heritage we produce new digital contents ‘original’ and so ‘different’ from the ‘real original’ contents: can we accept this?

Learning processes and knowledge creation and dissemination on the Net: how the new digital technologies could/should be used and which are the risks - technical, cultural, psychological - associated (and not so often discussed) with their use.

Increasingly cultural heritage institutions are providing access to their holdings and a variety of user services through their websites. Feedback from users and potential users is essential to the sound development and ongoing improvement of these efforts. This presentation will cover the range of activities cultural heritage institutions can undertake to elicit such feedback in today’s web environment including surveys, interactive websites, and web analytics tools.

Can cultural heritage institutions take advantage of new social media such as Twitter? With the rapid growth of such tools, this talk will appraise the nature of networking, crowdsourcing, and viral promotion.
Issues: social networking platforms • business models • twitter • viral video • blogs • social promotion engines • crowd sourcing • audience building • word of mouth promotions, branding • promotional uses

This talk will consider the impact, potential, and limitations of computational methods applied to scholarship and research in the humanities. The following questions, among others, will be considered: What's the difference between using a computer and using computational methods? What are the conditions that call for computational methods? What kinds of research questions can be addressed computationally? What research questions cannot be addressed computationally?

Internet systems today offer an enormous scope of opportunity for innovative use of digital content. Increased ease in searching and accessing content promotes collaboration and the sharing of ideas across diverse communities. While this sounds strategic for the cultural sector, libraries, archives and museums often remain in their silos. What specific conditions are necessary to ensure a successful output and concrete benefits for the users?