Pandora’s box: the future of cultural heritage on the world wide web

This paper argues that discussions about managing control of heritage resources have been rendered redundant by the runaway success of the World Wide Web and its increasing impact on global culture. If heritage professionals and memory institutions are to maintain their relevance it will be vital for them to use new media to engage with both special interest groups and society at large. A willingness to embrace participatory technologies will play a fundamental role in this process. It is also argued that promising experimentation with Semantic Web technologies is likewise being impeded by a failure to properly integrate information with the Web through the use of stable URIs