Heritageby

Heritageby is a digital platform and database for documenting and presenting cultural heritage assets, including tangible objects, sites, rituals, crafts, and performances. It enables communities, museums, archives, and researchers to contribute entries with descriptive text, metadata, and multimedia. Each entry covers origin, maker, materials, dates, provenance, and related sources. The platform supports images, audio, video, and documents, with a version history to track changes. It promotes open access and encourages licensing that supports reuse while respecting rights and sensitivities.

Entries are governed through a combination of community moderation and expert editorial review. The governance framework emphasizes informed consent, benefit sharing with communities, and safeguards for living knowledge or sacred practices. Rights management is integrated, with mechanisms to request restricted access when necessary. Heritageby aims to align with established standards for heritage information and interoperability, such as CIDOC CRM, and to provide data export options for researchers and institutions.

Development and use: The platform is designed to support preservation planning, education, and scholarship by offering a unified interface to explore heritage landscapes, trace changes over time, and connect related items. Partnerships with museums, universities, and cultural organizations help expand coverage while ensuring accuracy and respectful representation.

Reception and impact: Critics note potential benefits for access and learning, while challenges include representation gaps and governance complexity. Heritageby continues to evolve through community input and institutional collaboration.