Advanced Interaction Models for Cultural Content

The extension of the concept of cultural heritage of various natures, the relationship between their conservation and the relative fruition issues new challenges such as the combined utilisation of various databases online, the creation of super national and multilingual dictionaries. The rapid obsolescence of technologies furthermore imposes the attention to data storage. However, the aspects, which most involve the online user, are both the interface and easy access to different subjects and contents. The networking era following more than thirty years of stand alone data management has outlined the “must” of information interchange and interoperability of systems. This issue is more relevant in IT sector in which interoperability amongst huge data banks may unleash unpredictable benefits. Let us consider, for instance, Cultural Heritage Data Banks. Such data sets hold various information types ranging between alphanumeric data to images or computer generated movies. Experts in cultural heritage started many years ago defining data structure and formats in order to promote standards enabling information storage and exchange. This paper will draw the state of the art in the field advanced user interfaces ensuring interoperability of heterogeneous distributed data sets and their querying interfaces describing recent solutions and implementations outlining future trends and approaches. The opportunity to enjoy a common access interface to the whole set of Cultural Heritage data will enable us to get great results becoming, in addition, the basic elements for virtual exhibitions and cultural on line services with specific reference to European Culture.