Metadata as imaginary demands: Exploring metadata markets in digital heritage with speculative design

Karin Hansson

Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 2025, vol. 76, issue 2, 413-427

Abstract: Cultural heritage practices is formed by different socio‐technical regimes. Today, it is increasingly formed by the regime of commodification, expressed in terms like interoperability and reuse. This signifies a shift from a regime of the authentic object where the value is in the unique object positioned in a particular institutional context. To be able to exploit cultural heritage items on digital markets detached from their position in their original context, large resources are needed to furnish the items with metadata. In this metadata production, the regime of the institution as guarantor for the objects' authenticity, clash with the regime of aggregated trust, where authenticity is confirmed by aggregating data from multiple producers. This article argue that such rich contextual information is what creates long‐term value for digital archival objects. In this speculative design project focusing humanities research needs, I therefore turn the attention to the metadata producers. Taking the idea of metadata as a commodity to its peak, I show how we can interpret metadata as a supply to meet imaginary demands. By looking at metadata as imaginary demands we can begin to see the contours of the diverse conceptual models the archives carry.

Date: 2025
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