National Cultural Heritage Networks: Access and Context in the Digital Environment

With advances in digital technology, museums, archives, and libraries have faced challenges in presenting their collections of primary source material online. This paper discusses the potential for national federated search engines to further the goals of local and national cultural institutions and benefit users by creating a single access point to authoritative sources, formats, and subjects. The challenges associated iwth providing context at the item and collection level to make digital items valuable ot the user are also explored. A search for mourning customs on the Picture Australia, Images Canada, and American Memory national cultural heritage networks is used to highlight issues related to access and context throughout the paper. Finally, challenges to greater contextualization due to the diversity of users and the mandates of the networks themselves are examined.