ABSTRACT
This chapter promotes the concept of a scholarly ecosystem for virtual heritage where both the media assets involved and the communities are all active participants in the development of digital heritage that is a part of living heritage. Virtual heritage projects are composed of 3D models. The chapter presents six aims for virtual heritage projects: care, accuracy, sensitivity, effective and inspirational pedagogical features, and they should be collaborative and evaluation-orientated. Metadata is essential for virtual heritage to establish itself as a long-term research area, but metadata has to help the objectives of virtual heritage, which are arguably as much or more about education as they are about preservation. Quality research infrastructure is measured by research, by the quality of the contributors, by the impact of their contribution and by the effect of the research infrastructure on them as researchers. In terms of infrastructure, augmented reality (AR) is a quagmire.
