| Archiving the Web maps the nascent field of digital cultural heritage. I illustrate and explain core concepts of the field, and I introduce an interface tool developed to provide access to collections of digital cultural heritage and equalize opportunities for making sense of that heritage. The interface shows a relationship between experts, users, and evolving practices. As an interface for Web archives that collects and shares interpretations of viewers, it is a prompt to include a broader range of actors as knowledge brokers and catalysts for digital cultural preservation.; This study is based on two central arguments. First, I claim social technologies enable more effective forms of collective meaning construction. This is particularly true of the emerging tools for "collective tagging" which is profoundly reshaping the ability of people to organize, find and make meaning of objects and experiences, own and make use of knowledge, and maintain public discourse about the social construction of reality, transparently, together. From this argument I derive a second normative claim. We should explore ways to structure knowledge production to reach beyond the academy, museum, or library to include, and make reliable and valid, decentralized, social meaning making of and by the people so that multiple voices may be included in the stewardship of digital cultural heritage.; With the goal of defining a field for the stewardship of digital cultural heritage, I aimed to push digital scholarship and Web archiving further to develop inclusive and experiential practices for digital cultural heritage. Wayfinder, a personalizable interface for Web archives through which users interpret and understand archived Web artifacts through their individual exploration, was designed, developed and implemented to enable readers of digital scholarship to explore, annotate, and discuss archived Web artifacts. Through this interface, users discuss and digest their own and others' experiences of Web culture within the boundaries of an expertly curated Web archive. Wayfinder is an exhibit aid, a teaching tool, and a research tool that provides access to an expertly annotated collection of archived Web objects, and opens the collection up to non-expert interpretation. |
