The Digital Imperative: Envisioning the Path to Sustaining our Collective Digital Heritage. SUMMARY OF RESEARCH FINDINGS & OPPORTUNITY ASSESSMENT

In 2021, ICCROM embarked on a journey to understand the needs, challenges, and goals of heritage professionals whose work relates to sustaining digital heritage. The aim of this inquiry is to develop a proposal for a programme—tentatively called Sustaining Digital Heritage—that could help fill gaps in existing opportunities for capacity development offered on this topic. In order to learn directly from practitioners, interviews were conducted with over 30 heritage professionals from across the globe. Each interviewee was asked to share their perspective on:

  • What is digital heritage?
  • What does sustaining digital heritage mean?
  • How does their work relate to digital heritage?
  • What challenges do they face in relation to sustaining digital heritage?
  • What skills and capacities are needed to sustain digital heritage?

This report shares the findings of these discussions and identifies professional development opportunities that could help practitioners develop skills and capacities to sustain digital heritage.