At the WebSci2013 I presented our most recent work on how to use events to provide meaning to cultural collection objects. We designed an evaluation framework for online access to cultural heritage, which enables the assessment of online cultural heritage applications in terms of their provision and support of information and interpretation. It is anchored in digital hermeneutics: the study and theory of the Web as a vehicle of (self)-interpretation. Digital hermeneutics considers the limits of automation and modelling on the one hand, and the interaction of people and technology on the other. We analyzed twelve Web applications, representing the range of current state of the art in this eld. This provides valuable insights into what cultural heritage applications on the Web do, can do, and how distinctive goals are to be achieved. We also reported on three user studies with the Agora demonstrator which made us reconsider a number of assumptions we made about the user’s needs for information and interpretation. Read the reactions on twitter for the event.

You can find the data and the paper @figshare. Check out other related publications.