Evaluation of Quality in Cultural Heritage Websites: A case study at the National Centre of Linguistic and Historical Research of Maldives

Abstract

Cultural heritage websites aim to provide people with the information they need to improve their quality of life and sense of belonging. To do this, quality in websites is one aspect which has to be taken into account throughout the process. In Maldives no user studies have been done so far on this topic. The primary goal of the study was to evaluate and understand how quality principles and current trends in web services can improve the services offered by cultural heritage web sites to users. This exploratory study has made an initial attempt to explore ‘users’ and ‘makers’ priorities, perceptions and expectations of quality of cultural heritage website using MINERVA quality framework and current trends in web services. A case study was carried out using the National Centre for Linguistic and Historical Research (NCLHR) of Maldives involving users and makers. It comprised of a qualitative approach of focus group with staff and face-to-face interviews with users. In this study ‘Users’ are the people using the cultural heritage website for a specific information need and ‘Website-Makers’ are used to refer to the group of individuals within the organization, the staff who deal with website creation, maintenance and updating. The results indicated that for user’s quality of website started at content. All the quality principles from MINERVA, most important of which were highlighted as being effective and responsive, had to be based on this content. On the other hand, website-makers expectation of quality ended at the content. The content could not be provided due to offline daily work at the organization and lack of resources. For website-makers, users were perceived as a unified group of people. Users were very fluent with current trends in web services and website-makers were cautious of such new web services.