After launching the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage and a first report addressing the different potential functionalities, the European Commission launched a survey for heritage stakeholders, to optimize the results according to the variety of their contexts and needs.
With more than 1000 answers from researchers and cultural heritage professionals, more than 800 of them (75.4%) have shown their interest and engagement to become part of the Cloud stakeholders network, which in turn ensures its effectiveness as a community of practice.
The core of the Survey aims three main points: the challenges to make the most of digital transition, the specific support to enhance the use of the Cloud in daily work, and most the proposed tools they find more accurate for the Cloud. These sections are examined having into account every different group identified in the demographic questions, with a fourth heading where results from an open feedback question are classified and presented.
There are four highlighted tools, led by digital interaction and collaboration. Almost a half of the respondents (43.3%) demands tools for creating and sharing re-using interactive content on the Cloud, while it also highlights the need of Al-assisted metadata enrichment (37%), tools for manage digital contents in the Cloud (36.4%), and tools for analysing, designing, and testing interaction with visitors (33.6%).
The survey also enlightens the essential requirement on training on digital skills (55.1%) and learning about its intended applications (61.5%), so it is compulsory to enact its potential for greater awareness among the institutions. Besides, it is important to obtain up-to-date digital equipment and broadband internet (32.3%). This last point entails that structural funds and the Connecting Europe Facility are mobilised to accomplish this essential goal. Hence, there will be other activities to complement the Cloud, founded through other community funding opportunities like Digital Europe, Creative Europe and the EIT.
It has been a successful consultation exercise to match this digital infrastructure with its tools and services to the stakeholders, meeting their wishes and expectations. Researchers and cultural heritage professionals will be able to benefit from the services that the Cloud provides, unlocking the untapped potential of the sector in different ways that adjust to the most current challenges on the digital transition.