Using dates as contextual information for personalized cultural heritage experiences

Abstract

We present semantics-based mechanisms that aim to promote reflection on cultural heritage by means of dates (historical events or annual commemorations), owing to their connections to a collection of items and to the visitors’ interests. We argue that links to specific dates can trigger curiosity, increase retention, and guide visitors around the venue following new appealing narratives in subsequent visits. The proposal has been evaluated in a pilot study on the collection of the Archaeological Museum of Tripoli (Greece), for which a team of humanities experts wrote a set of diverse narratives about the exhibits. A year-round calendar was crafted so that certain narratives would be more or less relevant on any given day. Expanding on this calendar, personalized recommendations can be made by sorting out those relevant narratives according to personal events and interests recorded in the profiles of the target users. Evaluation of the associations by experts and potential museum visitors shows that the proposed approach can discover meaningful connections, while many others that are more incidental can still contribute to the intended cognitive phenomena.