Milda Kvizikevičiūtė (Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania)
eCulture: Advancing Accessibility and Curated Digital Content through a Unified Cultural Platform

The eCulture initiative, funded by the European Union’s “New Generation Lithuania” plan, addresses critical challenges in the digitization, accessibility, and dissemination of cultural heritage in Lithuania. The GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector has identified significant issues, including low levels of digitization and the insufficient or unappealing accessibility of digital and digitized cultural content. This project aims to create a unified digital platform that centralizes cultural content while emphasizing the development of curated products to enhance reuse, accessibility, and engagement for diverse user groups.

At the core of the platform is the creation of curated content tailored to the needs of specific audiences, including educators, researchers, children, cultural tourists, and entrepreneurs. Using design thinking methodology, the content curation process will undergo iterative testing and adaptation, ensuring the development of intuitive products that provide seamless access to cultural narratives and foster engagement and educational exploration. By integrating advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), 3D digitization, and semantic data models, eCulture transcends basic digitization processes to deliver thematically organized, high-quality digital resources.

The project will result in the creation of 100 curated content products of varying scale and technological sophistication, including collections, stories, blogs, maps, and virtual tours. This presentation outlines the challenges and opportunities involved in developing these curated products within the eCulture framework, addressing issues such as interoperability, accessibility, and audience-specific customization.

The project’s partners include diverse institutions spanning cultural, artistic, archival, and media domains. These range from national repositories like the Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System (LIMIS) and Lithuanian Central State Archives to performing arts institutions such as the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, as well as inclusive organizations like the Lithuanian Audiosensory Library. This interdisciplinary collaboration ensures the platform reflects the richness of Lithuania’s cultural heritage while meeting diverse user needs and fostering inclusivity, accessibility, and innovation.

By emphasizing the role of curated digital products, eCulture demonstrates how digital cultural heritage can bridge the gap between preservation and user engagement. This case study provides insights into the transformative potential of curated content for societal renewal, inclusivity, and innovation in cultural heritage practices.

Giedrė Milerytė-Japertienė (National Museum of Lithuania)
The Lithuanian National Museum: Advancing Digital Heritage Initiatives

The Lithuanian National Museum (LNM), home to the largest collection of cultural heritage artifacts in the country, comprising over 1.3 million items, was a relatively late entrant into the digitization process. It joined the national Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System (LIMIS) only in 2020. Over four years of digitization efforts, more than 23,000 cultural assets have been made accessible to users. Despite its delayed start, the museum is making significant strides in this area, aiming to catch up by both increasing digitization output and ensuring high-quality data presentation.

One key advantage of this later entry is the ability to avoid revisiting metadata issues, such as license assignments, that earlier adopters faced. Additionally, LNM has implemented a curated approach to the digitization process, focusing on thematic or logically connected groups of objects rather than digitizing them sequentially. This strategy ensures that digital collections are coherent and meaningful to users.

By leveraging the latest technologies, the museum is creating curated digital content for exhibitions and public engagement. Digitized objects are integral to virtual tours, online exhibitions, and even physical displays where 3D-printed models serve as replicas of authentic artifacts. Moreover, the museum collaborates with companies specializing in virtual and augmented reality game development, incorporating its cultural assets into interactive experiences.

The presentation will explore LNM's innovative initiatives, highlighting specific examples of how collaboration with academic and business sectors empowers the public to engage with and explore cultural heritage through its digital representations. These efforts demonstrate the museum’s commitment to modernizing heritage preservation and making it accessible in creative and meaningful ways.

This paper presents the results of collaborative projects in the Finnish Museum of Games and Finnish Postal Museum to safekeep the Finnish demoscene. The projects have focused on ‘non-traditional’ GLAM methods, such as workshops and film documentaries, in order to 1) enable the continuity of the demoscene culture, 2) make born-digital heritage, often perceived as ‘difficult’ due to its ‘exclusive’ and ‘technical’ nature, more accessible to new audiences, and 3) amplify new and alternative perspectives in the demoscene community.

The demoscene is a grassroots sub-culture of creative computing that sprung into existence in the late 80s and early 90s all around Europe. Its origins are in the networks and values surrounding software piracy and cracker counterculture of the mid-80s (Albert 2017; Reunanen 2014). Demos are real-time computer programs, often including graphics and music, that push the limits of the hardware they run on. Making demos form the core of the demoscene culture, but it is the diverse social networks and their shared values and skills that have become of interest to academic researchers and GLAM institutions (e.g. Nylund & Suvanto 2023; Albert 2020).

Finland was the first country in the world where the demoscene was incorporated on the National List of Intangible Heritage in 2020. This admission has made it possible to fund preservation projects in Tampere in collaboration with demoscene members. In the 2023 project Demoskenen uudet kasvot (“New Faces of the Demoscene”), workshops dedicated to the intergenerational transfer of skills related to the demoscene were organised. The Demoskene talteen (“Preserving the Demoscene”) project in 2024 in turn produced a 30- minute video documentary tailing the experiences of three teenagers coming into contact with the demoscene.

In these projects, the demoscene has been re-interpreted. As the demoscene has traditionally seen meritocratic competition as its core value, it has focused only on preserving the digital artefacts it produces, instead of focusing on the people, skills, values and experiences behind demoscene culture. The workshops and video documentary produced have highlighted how the community has begun conscious efforts to make the demoscene more accessible. The projects have given a voice to otherwise silenced minorities inside the community and the original meritocratic values of the demoscene have been reinforced by collaborative and emphatic approaches, which are helping to safekeep the intergenerational continuity of demoscene. These visions welcome collaboration with museums in building up the demoscene as sustainable form of born-digital culture.

Tuuli Ahlholm, Olli Nordling (Finnish Postal Museum)
From Collections to Connections: Engaging Communities via Digital Heritage in Tampere Museums

This presentation showcases past and future practical initiatives in the Finnish Postal Museum, Tampere, where both digitised and born-digital collections are employed in co-operative projects with local communities. We aim to demonstrate how even smaller GLAM organisations can successfully employ innovative digital approaches to foster deeper, more inclusive and more creative connections to heritage.
In early 2020’s, the Finnish Postal Museum and Tampere Historical Museums started collaborating towards a joint application for the national status of responsibility for communication, games, post and digital life. In preparation, we launched big and small initiatives to experiment with methodologies and ways of engaging communities with digital heritage. In the 2021-2022 Erasmus+ project DREAM (Digital Reality and Educational Activities in Museums), we developed with European colleagues an experimental methodology for combining pedagogical tools with digital artefacts presented via AR. In the 2022 project Esirippu auki! (“Raise the curtain!”) digitised artefacts were provided to communities as material for artistic expression. As a result, local groups representing intellectually disabled, senior citizens, and music students created three unique performances - all drawing inspiration from the museum’s collections. Smaller projects have included outreach work on Discord servers, where we engage teenagers and young adults to document the diversities of their daily communications.
Each project produced both expected and unexpected results, and respective successes and failures. Reflecting back critically as museum professionals, we share our learning experiences: how can digital heritage be used to build up relations with different audiences and make museums - beyond just their collections - more approachable to everyone? How can we build trust with communities and encourage them to become active partners in valuing and preserving their own cultural heritage?
These questions have become all the more pressing for our institution, when in 2024 we were finally granted the status of responsibility for digital life by the Ministry of Education and Culture. Increasingly large parts of our society - from work to arts, from social life to entertainment - exist or leave traces solely in digital form. Due to the legal and technical challenges and ephemeral nature that characterise born-digital artefacts, collecting and documenting this heritage becomes an impossible task for GLAM institutions without the active co-operation of communities and creators. We share our plans for future projects, where we apply our learned lessons in order to foster meaningful collaboration and build up pride for our common born-digital heritage also.

Anna Puhakka (Finnish National Gallery)
Art and Technology in Harmony: A Case Study of the Finnish National Gallery's Combine24 Competition 

In 2024, the Finnish National Gallery issued a challenge to the blockchain-based art community: engage with its copyright-free CC0 collection through Combine24, an international generative art competition. This initiative exemplifies how technology and art can unite to reinterpret cultural heritage and foster innovative creative practices. 

This presentation will explore the Combine24 competition as a case study, offering valuable insights for cultural institutions and creatives alike. It will detail the competition’s structure, objectives, and outcomes, shedding light on how museums can serve as active facilitators of artistic innovation. By inviting artists to interact with collection databases and associated metadata, the Finnish National Gallery opened its archives to new possibilities, positioning itself at the forefront of digital creativity and cultural engagement. 

Key themes of the presentation include: 

• Museums as Collaborative Partners: How institutions can bridge traditional and contemporary practices by encouraging interaction between historical collections and cutting-edge technology. 
• Technology as a Creative Catalyst: The potential of generative art and blockchain platforms to reinterpret and expand the boundaries of cultural heritage. 
• Fostering Interdisciplinary Connections: Insights into how collaborations between technologists, artists, and cultural organizations can lead to meaningful and unexpected outcomes. 

The session will illustrate how Combine24 successfully leveraged the FNG CC0 collection and metadata, inspiring artists to create works that blend historical and contemporary narratives. By encouraging creative engagement, the competition served as a model for how museums can transform static collections into dynamic resources for dialogue and innovation. 

Through this case study, attendees will gain practical strategies for fostering similar collaborations, utilizing open-access collections, and integrating technology to build new pathways for interaction with cultural heritage. Ultimately, the presentation underscores the transformative potential of digital tools in reimagining the role of museums in the 21st century. 

This session invites cultural institutions, technologists, and creatives to envision a future where art and technology work hand-in-hand to preserve the past, while simultaneously creating new forms of interaction and storytelling for global audiences. 

Raivis Sīmansons, Cory McLeod (Žanis Lipke Memorial, Latvia)
Žanis: Through Our Eyes. Multi-Plot Documentary for Virtual Reality. Presentation and discussion about digital Holocaust memory and immersive learning

Considering limitations in Holocaust learning posed by the post-witness era, the archival material and physical space where historic events took place proves to be the last authentication factor of Nazi crimes.

The story of Žanis is a mosaic of the 55 people he rescued. Each person’s experience was different, and each rescue was its own uniquely harrowing endeavor. We learn the story of Lipke through the individual stories of the people he rescued and through historical sites where events took place. Each story is told through a first-person narrative, using original written and oral sources, and digital reconstruction of historical sites in 3D.

These stories are inherently non-linear, with intertwining timelines, overlapping characters, and different points of view. Virtual Reality as a medium is also inherently non-linear, lending itself seamlessly to an immersive, choose-your-own-adventure narrative format.

HANNA’S STORY is the first in this series. It recounts the experiences of Hanna Stern, who, at the age of six, was deported from Berlin to the Riga Ghetto with her mother, Sophie, and her older brother, Phillip. While interned at the Kaiserwald Concentration Camp, Hanna was saved by Žanis, who helped her escape and hid her until the end of the Holocaust. This story is based on a letter Hanna’s mother, Sophie, wrote to a lawyer representing their petition to the government of the Federal Republic of Germany for wartime compensation. The voiceover is read by Hanna’s daughter, Ilana Avimor.

The expected outcome of presentation and discussion with digital humanities experts are eventual results from an impromptu front-end evaluation of a work in progress of this new VR production which features an experimental out-of-headset mode of presentation suitable for a group experience.

https://zanisvrdoc.com/

Sander Jürisson, Anna-Liisa Õispuu, Teele Siig (Estonian Maritime Museum)
From Exhibit to Experience: Enhancing Learning with Museum Collections through Open Innovation

Museums are increasingly utilising their collections to reach audiences digitally, enhancing educational experiences for students and visitors alike. The Estonian Maritime Museum (EMM) has adopted this approach through two recent initiatives that expand digital learning and engagement. As a partner in the Horizon Europe RECHARGE project, EMM uses a Living Labs and open innovation framework to co-create classroom resources with partners from educational technology community. This collaborative process has enabled EMM to bring museum content to life in educational settings, offering students immersive, curriculum-aligned materials that connect them to maritime history interactively.

In another open innovation initiative, EMM served as a piloting partner with Ericsson, helping to design the user-focused aspects of the Every Place Has A Story platform. This augmented reality (AR) solution aimed to add digital storytelling layers to the museum’s physical exhibits, enhancing visitor engagement by connecting artefacts to vivid historical narratives. Although the project ultimately proved unviable for long-term use, it offered EMM invaluable experience in digital storytelling based on museum collections, building the team’s capacity to engage in similar future projects.

This presentation will explore EMM’s experience with RECHARGE, illustrating how Living Labs support sustainable educational tools by merging community insights with technical expertise. It will also reflect on the lessons learned from the Ericsson collaboration, demonstrating how digital layers can transform museum collections both in-person and remotely, fostering impactful connections between cultural heritage and technology for diverse audiences. Additionally, the presentation will provide practical guidance on using the participatory cultural business model canvas developed during the RECHARGE project and offer insights into building a development process based on the Living Lab methodology.