Virtual Heritage A Guide

This diverse and fascinating collection of essays on virtual heritage takes the reader on a tour of some of the most pertinent issues and challenges currently facing the domain. There is a scholarly focus on the digital technologies deployed in a virtual heritage context, what these can achieve in terms of representation, and the relationship between precision, accuracy in representation, and the characterisation of authenticity. It is refreshing also to see consideration of less technical issues such as ethics and the related question of (digital) data preservation and long-term access. While these aspects of virtual heritage may be intimately related to various technical developments they also help to situate virtual heritage within the heritage domain more broadly by drawing out the similarities, and differences, between the ‘virtual’ and ‘non-virtual’ in how the issues should be addressed. The impact of our interactions with the communities we serve and our obligations to care for and curate the content we create on their behalf are too often afterthoughts in project design.