Bridging User Requirements and Cultural Objects: A Process-Oriented Framework for Cultural E-Services

This chapter aims at defining a framework for the design of e-government services on cultural heritage. Starting from an analysis of three cases on digitisation of different types of cultural objects the authors highlight the problems existing in the creation of e-services on cultural heritage. These cases show the existence of four key issues in the development of this kind of information systems: digitisation, requirements engineering, standardization, and interoperability. The proposed framework addresses these issues focusing on the user requirements and the cultural object representation. Dynamic content exchange requires the use of a prescriptive framework for the development of cultural heritage Web sites. This chapter provides such a framework using observation from concrete applications and knowledge of information systems development methodologies.