ABSTRACT
It is an old dilemma, described by Silverman and O’Neill (2004) in the context of the development of museum knowledge, “that no theory will suffice unless it is grounded in practice, and no practice will sustain itself unless it can be understood and explained” (p. 39). This problem will be illustrated in this chapter on the basis of an interactive on-site installation concerned with gene diagnostics. Based on the results of a visitor research project that has been carried out on this installation, we will discuss strong links and still-open questions of informal and digital learning. The second example is an online service providing access to cultural heritage in Europe with the aim of allowing the widest possible participation, not only by allowing visitors to create a personal space, but also by organizing collection days where personal memorabilia can be digitized and added to the online platform, or by organizing “Hackathon” competitions (https://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/hackathons" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/hackathons) to demonstrate how new services can be developed based on the content available in the Europeana initiative.
