Local communities across the world have documents, artefacts and crucially memories that are precious but precarious. Digital tools to help communities record, curate and present their own heritage are important both for the life and empowerment of each community, and also to add to a broader historical body of knowledge. When designing digital interventions, there is an apparent tension between co-creating tools and processes that are meaningful for a particular community and creating generic tools that can be reused at scale. Tools created as part of ongoing engagements with two very different communities has shown that this apparent tension may be an illusion. Indeed, tools created very specifically for the local circumstances of one are also well-suited to the other. This is promising and suggests that it is possible to create human and technical infrastructure to democratise digitisation for cultural heritage in the small that has broad impact.
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TalkOver in action
OcrMarkup in action
