A curadoria digital nas instituições culturais: possibilidades de reuso de dados de Arte

Abstract

Through the initiative of various institutions, many cultural collections have been digitized, generating material that has great potential for reuse, even outside the context in which they are produced. These digital art data (which relate directly to Art Information) are valuable assets that, stored in repositories in cultural institutions, need visibility and dynamism, creating memories. It is understood that there is no purpose in preserving Art data that will not be used exhaustively, generating new ideas and possibilities. In this sense, this research seeks to identify what are the types of reuse performed in cultural institutions. The literature courses over the possibilities, supporting this task through Digital Curation. However, there still remains the need to discover the activities that are in fact performed. Therefore, the question is: what types of activity have cultural institutions been developing to boost their collections and promote their reuse, making them more visible and interactive to society? In order to answer this question, a survey of existing practices has been applied as a methodological procedure, with their subsequent systematization in seven categories proposed based on the literature, namely: Aggregations, Collaborative Space, Online Curation, Education, Scientific Research, Computer Applications and Commercial Services. With the intention of selecting which cultural institutions to investigate, we used one of the best practices for access to digitized cultural heritage: the list of sources/aggregators from Europeana Collections. Four European cultural institutions were chosen, two with a cultural center profile and two museums. In order to identify evidence of the reuse practices developed at the selected institutions, a deep analysis of their websites was conducted. As result, we discovered that one of the four selected institutions practices all categories of reuse and the other institutions practice three or more of the investigated activities. Researching on the websites of the institutions proved to be a great challenge, due to the information architecture being designed specifically for each website, resulting in peculiar browsing structures that don’t always result in totally intuitive presentations, which in turn demands a great effort in finding the information and activities of reuse. Finally, it is concluded that, in order to implement these systems in the Brazilian museums and cultural institutions, that is, to import and explore the practices presented through the European museums and cultural centers, massive investments would be required to transform the types of reuse found abroad into feasible activities, and no longer view them as mere possibilities.