What are the research and development needs for digital cultural heritage?

Question

Given limited resources, how do we prioritize the necessary work to advance the field of digital cultural heritage?  What standards, practices, workflows, tools, and platforms are most needed?  Furthermore, what are the elements that contribute to a successful R&D endeavor in this field?  At an even more basic level, what are the intrinsic properties of a digital humanities or arts collection?  These are just some of the questions that will be considered for an upcoming session at this year's Digital Preservation conference hosted by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance in Washington, DC.  Before responding we invite you to read the following guest post on The Signal:

http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2014/07/research-and-development-for-digital-cultural-heritage-preservation-a-virtual-and-in-person-open-forum/

Your comments, suggestions, and examples will help inform the session!

Answer 1

I think cultural heritage organizations need research on how to work with multiple databases. We have many systems such as DSpace, Omeka, ArchivesSpace, and Collective Memory. Each of these have very good use cases, but none is a complete solution. Instead of trying to create a one-size-fits all database, we need research into building systems of systems. We also need education for institutions to understand how and why to do it.

I'd also be interested in comparisons of what digital preservation actions these systems and what needs to be provided by another system, e.g. Archivematica.