Framing cultural heritage preservation in a crowdsourcing taxonomy.

Cultural heritage plays a pivotal role in our lives and it is vital for it to be passed on to future generations. In the past cultural heritage preservation was the responsibility of a few, often professionals, who engaged in the collection, processing, curation, exhibition and dissemination activities. However, with few people involved processes were tedious, lengthy and often incomplete, such as the data collection. But with technological advancements such as crowdsourcing, new opportunities for the preservation of cultural heritage can be used to address challenges facing the preservation of cultural heritage. Crowdsourcing as a tool has thus a potential to help preserve cultural heritage as well as to allow cultural heritage to be shared and openly accessed using web technologies.

Thus the objective of this thesis is to provide guidance on how crowdsourcing can be utilised to support cultural heritage preservation in, especially, the Namibian context. Based on a systematic literature review and case study analysis, this thesis frames cultural heritage preservation in a crowdsourcing taxonomy. The framework serves as a guideline for implementing successful cultural heritage crowdsourcing portals, which is demonstrated with one case study.