CIPHER Project Summary - The Methodological Goals

Although the set of tools produced through the above applications were a significant outcome of the project, it is the methodology governing their adoption and use that we consider to be a necessary and equally valid contribution. The manner in which the five methodological goals of the project were addressed is summarized in this section.

Supporting communities in the development and launch of CH Forums

Drawn from the extensive experience gathered through two sets of project trails run in the four CH forums, the key points to be considered when developing and launching a CH forum include:

• The identification of potential user groups, their goals and skills and the consequences of this for forum design
• An early analysis of the kinds of content to be developed, exchanged and archived within the forum and the consequences of this for forum design
• Supporting the full activity cycle of the communities involved, that is: the finding of resources, their organisation, the composition of new resources, and their presentation within the community
• Identifying all of stakeholders in the CH Forum, not just users but host organisations such as heritage centres, municipalities and tourist organisations. Determining the kind of return of investment the organisation requires for long-term commitment, and how this can be measured
• Technological development should be carried out according to sustainability guidelines in order to minimise maintenance and expenditure

An architectural model of CH Forum construction to ensure long-term technical sustainability

It was considered vital that the approach taken in the development of CH Forums was technologically sustainable. Guidelines for the evaluation and selection of technologies according to their sustainability were developed within the project. Designing software as interoperable services was considered key to ensuring technological sustainability. As can be seen from the technological achievements in the project, many of the tools are generic standalone tools that can be used in any of our existing or future CH Forums. This includes for example ADE, PAT and Apollo (http://apollo.open.ac.uk/). Larger portal services such as the explorer.ie have also been designed as a set of interoperable services. The representation of heritage knowledge expressed through the annotation of heritage artefacts and/or used to support search and exploration has also conformed to notational XML standards and domain specific standards such as the CIDOC CRM (http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/). This for example allowed the story fountain software developed in the Bletchley Park forum to be applied to the domain of Bohemian Legends.

An account of how communities of interest can be actively involved in CH Forum evolution to support its long-term content sustainability

CIPHER has produced a broad range of services that allow citizens to become actively involved in cultural heritage. We classified these according to four processes: finding, organising, composing and publishing. The CIPHER toolset provides candidate tools to support each of these processes. Communities can therefore:

• Find and collect heritage resources (using e.g. SOM, Story Fountain)
• Organise their findings into personal portfolios (using e.g. Apollo, RAT)
• Compose new presentations for submission to the portal (using e.g. RAT-O)
• Present their work with the community (using e.g. explorer.ie, Community Story Exchange) and outside the community (using e.g. the SMS services in Story Fountain and explorer.ie)

An articulation of concrete, viable business models of how CH Forums can be adopted by associated consortia to ensure their long-term financial sustainability

The CIPHER toolkit and methodology have broad applicability within the tourist and municipal sectors. For each application there needs to be a clear formulation of how the CH Forum can provide benefit to the organisation (e.g. heritage centre, municipality, tourist company) that is hosting the service. For this reason the notion that any evaluation of a CH Forum should encompass multiple stakeholders (from the host institution as well as the host community) has been used to guide the development work and the two sets of project trails.

A description of how CH Forums can be related to their associated regions and physical world counterparts to ensure their long-term relevance

An important objective of the CIPHER project was that our approach would encourage rather than replace visits to heritage institutions. This has been successfully realised in a number of scenarios. User groups that we have worked with include non-professional research communities, professional research communities, school groups and visitors. Our work with these user groups has served to encourage visits in the following ways:

• Our work with professional communities in all forums has allowed them to present their work to interested communities and interact with groups that have a genuine interest in the subject matter. This has helped to motivate the communities and increase their participation as demonstrated through visits to heritage sites. For example in the Irish archaeology forum explorer.ie tools have been used by professional communities to widen community access to their work. In the central Europe forum heritage professionals have supported the work of students and heritage groups in the exploration of sacred monuments, architecture and the Bohemian dynasties.
• CIPHER has built links between school children and heritage centres, thus encouraging school visits to heritage centres and the use of heritage content within the curriculum. CIPHER tools have been used to support a school visit to Bletchley Park plus a number of related collaborative web-based activities such as the exchange of code breaking puzzles between schools. In the Carta Marina forum, the CIPHER tools have been used extensively to support classroom activities, for example in the construction of a modern Carta Marina showing the pupils perceived modern day monsters and their classification.
• CIPHER technology aimed at visitors has also been carefully formulated to encourage rather than replace visits. For example the SMS services provided through explorer.ie and Story Fountain allow visitors to concentrate on the experience when visiting a heritage centre, providing them with additional resources when they get home. These can encourage return visits and promote more active involvement in a heritage domain, but in no way replace the visiting experience.