Challenges and perspectives on the use of open cultural heritage data across four different user types: Researchers, students, app developers and hackers

In this paper, we analyse and discuss from a user perspective and from an organisational perspective the challenges and perspectives of the use of open
cultural heritage data. We base our study on empirical evidence gathered through four cases where we have interacted with four different user groups: 1) researchers, 2) students, 3) app developers and 4) hackers. Our own role in these cases was to engage with these users as teachers, organizers and/or data providers. The cultural heritage data we provided were accessible as curated data sets or through API's. Our findings show that successful use of open heritage data is highly dependent on organisations' ability to calibrate and curate the data differently according to contexts and settings. More specifically, we show what different needs and motivations different user types have for using open cultural heritage data, and we discuss how this can be met by teachers, organizers and data providers.