MINERVA EC for cultural web applications:

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Culture OnLine, 5-7.6

• MINERVA EC for cultural web applications
• from the quality principles to the Handbook on
  cultural web user interaction
• Monika Hagedorn-Saupe
• Institute for Museum Research, State Museums
  Berlin - PK

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2007-2008 MINERVA EC Working Group on quality
accessibility and usability
The Working Group is coordinated by
Germany Participants are from Finland, Italy,
Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, Belgium,
Slovenja, and Israel.
WP5
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2007-2008 MINERVA EC Working Group on quality
accessibility and usability
In short Our European Working Group works on
quality of cultural web applications. We
continue the work done in MINERVA, and
complements the results with new publications.
We monitor relevant guidelines and promote best
practices related to websites. The main target
are the small institutions. Interactive events
are being organised to assess websites and to
help growing awareness of quality and
accessibility of websites among the cultural
institutions.
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2007-2008 MINERVA EC Working Group on quality
accessibility and usability

• Our objectives are
• to support small cultural heritage institutions
  in increasing the accessibility to their digital
  cultural heritage by sharing practises and
  techniques within the wider community and
  interested public
• to motivate cultural heritage institutions which
  are still reluctant to make their already
  existing digital content available within the
  European digital library
• to contribute to the mutual alignment of
  metadata sets and metadata use in the cultural
  heritage sector in order to improve quality,
  accessibility and usability

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2007-2008 MINERVA EC Working Group on quality
accessibility and usability

• Our objectives are
• to support guidelines and measurement tools that
  assist in the maintenance and raising the quality
  of cultural heritage applications
• to contribute to the organisation of tutorials
  to make users aware of open source software tools
  that assist in improving the quality,
  accessibility and usability of digital cultural
  heritage offers.

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Directory of European and national rules on web
applications
First release 2004 http//www.minervaeurope.org/pu
blications/ qualitycriteria1_2draft/appendix4.htm
New release June 2008 Update and addition of new
Member States national rules http//www.minervaeu
rope.org/eu_nat_webapplications.html edited by
the Research Staff of the Italian Senate Library
in co-operation with European Parliamentary
Libraries
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Museo Web

• The technical realisation of this model follows
  the guidelines of
• Handbook for Quality in Cultural Web Sites
• European principles for quality in a cultural Web
  site
• Museo Web is organised into four parts
• 1) Structure and Contents of the Prototypes
• 2) Tutorial
• 3) Quality Control
• 4) Content Management System
• Currently
• Wider distribution of the Museo Web- Tool
• Beginning of translation of the interface, e.g.
  German, Polish

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Museo Web CMS visualisation and administration
Open Source platform English and Italian
administration interface
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Publications

• In addition to dissemination and workshops
• our major activity is a new MINERVA tool
• Handbook
• on cultural web user interaction
• to be presented now
• by Pierluigi and Maria Teresa

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Culture OnLine, 5-7.6

• MINERVA EC for cultural web applications
• from the quality principles to the Handbook on
  cultural web user interaction
• Pierluigi Feliciati
• (University of Macerata, Italy)?
• Maria Teresa Natale
• (Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali,
  Italy)?

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Key messages

• Quality must be planned into a website from
• the start of the project
• The user is critical involve him at every stage
  
• Relationships with other resources must be
• considered online (interoperability) and
  future
• (long term preservation)?

With proper planning, and building on the
information, examples, standards and guidelines
available, creating a high-quality website need
not be much more difficult, expensive or slow
than creating a lower-quality one.
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MINERVA milestones for cultural Web quality
2002 Beginning of Minerva 2003 First
Deliverable on quality 2003 Handbook for quality
in cultural Web sites Improving quality for
citizens and 10 quality principles 2004
MuseoWeb planning kit 2005 Quality Principles
for Cultural Websites a Handbook 2006-08
Dissemination of MINERVA products on quality
of cultural websites 2008 Handbook on cultural
web user interaction (Lubljiana)?
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MINERVA MINERVA Plus MINERVA EC
WP5
Downloadable on www.minervaeurope.org
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The users who are they?
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The users who are they (in 2003)?
MINERVA Handbook for quality in cultural Web
sites improving quality for citizens (2003) A
user is a professional or not, specialist or not
who casually or with specific aims, occasionally
or systematically uses the Cultural Web
Application. User identity is extremely variable
depending on cultural profile, aspirations for
cultural growth, professional aims and even
momentary curiosity.
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The users who are they (in 2003)?
MINERVA quality principle USER-CENTERED A good
quality cultural website must be
user-centred, taking into account the needs of
users, ensuring relevance and ease of use through
responding to evaluation and feedback.
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The users who are they in 2008?

• After 4 years, we find other definitions for the
  Internet user, for example
• hybrid individual
• transceiver (transmitter receiver)?
• prosumer (producer consumer)
• information recipient and provider of its own
  contents  

Different terms characterize the many users
activities and behaviours on the web consumer /
client / audience user / surfer / viewer player
/ clicker / downloader / streamer
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Another type of user...
Non human users/agents robots, spiders,
crawlers, harvesters

• This variety of definitions reflects an
  articulated offer of contents and applications in
  the new media environment, which at the same time
  is
• vehicle of information and communication
• encyclopedic archive and tool of cultural
  training
• entertainment and community interaction area
• technological platform

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Handbook on cultural web user interaction
edited by MINERVA EC Working Group Quality,
Accessibility and Usability Monika
Hagedorn-Saupe (Working Group Quality,
Accessibility and Usability coordinator)? Europea
n Editorial Committee Monika Hagedorn Saupe
(coordinator), Germany Hanna Arpiainen, Finland
- Pierre-Yves Desaive, Belgium Nathanael Dupré
Latour, Czech Republic Axel Ermert, Germany -
Pierluigi Feliciati, Italy Gabriele Froeschl,
Austria - Susan Hazan, Israel Karine Lasaracina,
Belgium - Maria Teresa Natale , Italy Tzanetos
Pomonis, Greece - Maria Sliwinska, Poland Hans
Van der Linden, Belgium - Franc Zakrajsek,
Slovenja Texts by Rossella Caffo, Pierluigi
Feliciati, Chiara Faggiolani, Monika Hagedorn
Saupe, Susan Hazan, Maria Teresa Natale,
Giovanni Solimine Good practices edited by Karim
Ben Hamida, Sara Di Giorgio, Chiara Faggiolani,
Pierluigi Feliciati, Susan Hazan, Elisa Sciotti
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Goals and target

• To answer to some questions still unsolved
• in the first MINERVA quality tools
• What do users want?
• How do users behave?
• How can we understand the use they make of our
  web applications?
• Do effective methods to ask users about their
  expectations (before) and their degree of
  satisfaction (after) exist?

The target readers of the handbook are all the
cultural subjects and projects concerned with
tangible and intangible cultural heritage,
planning to develop new web applications or to
update and improve their existing applications,
taking into serious account the usersì point of
view.
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Table of contents
1. Users and cultural contents on the web state
of the art
2. Finding ones way
3. The importance of using metadata
4. Practical tools
Annexes
www.minervaeurope.org/ publications/ handbookwebus
ers-firstdraft-june08.pdf
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1. Users and cultural contents on the web state
of the art
1.1. Users and services in cultural web
applications websites and portals Synthetic and
up-to-date panorama of users and cultural content
providers on the web
Good practices
1.2. Current trends in web services Web 2.0-3.0
The role of cultural institutions in the current
and future information society and the changing
face of the institutions as they present, and
represent the institution online
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2. Finding ones way
2.3 Web applications life cycle The relation
between the life phases of a web site and the
problems connected with interaction with its
users.
2.4 Users and uses The web user state of the art
and tendencies The web user who is he? The
in-home user and the simulated user Simulated
uses Systems adapting their behaviour to users
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2. Finding ones way
2.5 Interactive and user side services Interactive
communication services with the
intermediation of the information provider
Interactive learning services Virtual
interactive tours Commercial interactive
services Interactive forms User-side
services MUVEs
2.6 Audience measurement in the Internet Census
data measurements web analytics Sample or user
centred measurements (meter standardized
interview static textual questionnaire)? Audience
metrics Log file analysis Protection of privacy
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3. The importance of using metadata

• The importance of using tagging and metadata, to
  grant visibility and findability to our contents.
  
• A quick guide to
• Dublin Core metadata element set
• syndication techniques and languages
• the next step the semantic web.

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4. Practical tools
4.1 A self-evaluation questionnaire for planning
a user-centred web applications Addressed to
those cultural subjects that are about to develop
a new web application (or want to update one
already on-line) and whose objective is to
seriously evaluate users expectations, their
satisfaction and the possibility of foreseeing
advanced forms of interaction.
4.2. Websites and portals feedback form
Standardized interview model to be distributed
to users of web sites and cultural portals. It
can be used as a reference for the construction
of a personalized questionnaire, that responds to
the requirements of ones own web application.
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Annexes
Some documents and studies produced by important
institutions and other European projects are
included at the end of the handbook.
1. Study on users and usages of Michael-fr
website 2. Digital Library Users Results of a
Survey on Needs, Expectations and Skills 3.
MICHAEL Questionnaire 4. EUROPEANA Questionnaire
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Thank you for your attention. Any
question? Pierluigi Feliciati p.feliciati_at_gmail.c
om Maria Teresa Natale natale_at_mclink.it
The user is