Digital heritage and the rise of theory in museum computing

This paper is concerned with the emergence of a subject now called digital heritage, and considers where it has come from and in what form it might progress. The paper contrasts the rise of theory within the subject of museum studies with the more practical preoccupations of its sub-discipline, museum computing. It highlights the emergence of more sociological and theorised readings of museum computing (what is termed here the cultural turn within the subject's approach), alongside the co-ordinated expansion of research activity in this area, particularly through inter-governmental sponsorship. The early showings of a critical framework for this new active discipline are then explored, and a series of trajectories for enquiry and approach are suggested and stressed, including an engagement with 'change', an acknowledgement of the agency of new media, a recognition of the value of historical methodologies, and the aspiration for a more nuanced discourse.