Abstract

There are many cultural sites on the Web, yet often little attention is paid to the user who will have to make use of them. This contribution offers a first examination of Umbria Cultura, the web portal of the Umbria Region. Drawing on a specific set of criteria, the analysis will proceed to assess the portal’s features, its usability, its state of updating, and the resources linked within and/or contained in it, so as to arrive at an overall evaluation.

1 Evaluating digital resources

In recent years, interest in digital libraries has grown. Often, however, websites, especially those designed to provide information in the cultural sphere, offer complex modes of use. This article sets out to submit Umbria Cultura, the web portal devoted to the culture of the Umbria Region, to a first analysis, taking as its reference the method for evaluating websites proposed by the library system of Kent State University (Ohio, USA)[1]. The categories the American university uses to assess a website are five: authority, objectivity, accuracy, currency and usability. Authority refers to the authoritativeness of the producing body and its experience in the field. Objectivity is the way in which the resource’s aims and objectives are set out. Accuracy concerns the care with which information is presented: the kind of content and the links to any digital resources of various types (institutional, academic, and so on). Currency refers to how up to date the portal is, the reliability of the information and data entered, and the resource’s creation date. Finally there is usability: a digital resource must have a logical organisation and be intuitive for the user; content must be produced in a clear and comprehensible manner.

2 What is Umbria Cultura?

Umbria Cultura is a portal aimed at everyone interested in the cultural activities and services offered by the Umbria Region. Its goal is to promote and enhance the region’s historical, artistic and cultural heritage through the institutions dedicated to it, museums, historical archives, libraries, archaeological sites, the sound archive, ecomuseums and regional publishing. Recognising in the performing arts, too, a crucial moment for personal and collective growth, Umbria Cultura is committed to spreading the musical culture of bands and choirs; it supports the festivals and historical re-enactments that follow one another throughout the year across the region as expressions of a social phenomenon intended to foster knowledge of history and traditions and to preserve their memory.
To encourage an ever wider dissemination of these resources, the Umbria Region has joined international and national initiatives such as the national Michael Project, the MuseD-Italia portal, the European cultural portal Europeana and Media Library On Line; it has taken part in projects such as Nati per Leggere and Umbria Musei Digital Edition, and has developed applications for portable devices (tablets and smartphones) dedicated to the museums and monuments of the region.
The authoritativeness of the producing body is therefore well established, and it guarantees the reliability of the information contained in the portal.
Examining Umbria Cultura’s URL (http://www.umbriacultura.it/SebinaOpac/.do?sysb=mab) shows that there is a direct relationship between the Umbria Region and Sebina YOU, a web platform owned by the company DM Cultura, which “makes it possible to create a library portal in which catalogue, website and user services are unified” and is used by a range of libraries (university, public, national and ministerial)[2].
Sebina also provides the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) used by librarians for cataloguing, as well as the search interface intended for users.

3 Umbria Cultura under the Lens

Umbria Cultura’s portal has no classic menu, usually placed on the right- or left-hand side or in the header, but instead presents, within the body of the homepage, the various categories that can be accessed.

The site’s homepage runs vertically and is made up of the following elements:

• Header, or masthead, positioned at the top of the portal and clearly visible to the user. The Header remains the same across the various sections and comprises the following elements: a button to switch the portal into English (a very important feature that highlights the Umbria Region’s vocation to open up to an international public), links to the social networks Facebook and Twitter, a login button, the Umbria Region logo, a quick-search bar for making general queries across the portal’s main sections, and finally a link to the Umbria Region’s OPAC.
• Body, or central area, where the portal’s main content is loaded. In our case it is divided into sections: “Museums, Libraries and other Places of Culture”, “New in the Library”, “The Collections”, “Shared Memory Archive” and “Historical Archives”. The first three sections on the homepage are accompanied by scrolling images.
• Sidebar, a vertical column set on the right-hand side of the portal. It hosts a range of content, arranged as follows: “What’s On”, “Our Suggestions”, the link to the “Young People’s Libraries” portal, the link to Media Library On Line, a link to an exhibition, and a few comments written by users.
• Footer, or foot of the page, the lower part of the portal positioned beneath the body. The footer carries the logos of the European Union (European Regional Development Fund), the Ministry of Economic Development, the Umbria Region, the App Store and Google Play. It also contains information on privacy, legal matters and credits. The copyright date, the recommended browsers and the cookie notice are present as well.

In the “Museums, Libraries and other Places of Culture” section, thanks in part to the search field at the top and to the menu (“browse the results”) on the right-hand side of the page, one can find a range of information organised by type and place of origin. It is possible to search for museums, libraries, historic theatres and archaeological sites within the region, even starting directly from the particular municipality of interest. For each of these resources, once opened, one obtains its location, a descriptive record, images and any user comments. In the “New in the Library” section one can discover the new materials, of various kinds, that have come into the libraries of Umbria. In the menu on the right the search can be refined by applying various filters: type of document, place of culture/holding body, author/producing body and year. The categories into which documents are divided are “modern printed book”, “video material”, “non-musical sound recording”, “musical sound recording”, “printed music”, “multimedia material”, “theses and dissertations”, “modern printed cartography”, “object”, “electronic resource”, “graphic material” and “manuscript text”.
Search results can be sorted by relevance, by author/producing body name, or by year. Moreover, each of them, once opened, provides information on its location, a detailed record with all the resource’s own information, and user comments. As for video material, the page is enriched with further information such as reviews and the trailer, a feature in keeping with new-generation catalogues[3].
Search results can be printed, shared on the social networks, Facebook and Twitter, or sent by email. Alongside the “New in the Library” section, one can go directly to the catalogue of Umbria’s libraries, which allows a simple, general single-field search, a search by type of material (modern book, audiovisuals, antiquarian book, music, periodicals, graphics, digital resources), a search within a specific library belonging to the Umbrian library network, and an advanced search querying several fields in order to make one’s results more precise.
From the Umbrian libraries portal one can also read e-books, consult new arrivals, access the “Young People’s Libraries” catalogue (the portal dedicated to children) and access the Media Library On Line digital library.
The “Young People’s Libraries” catalogue page offers a great deal of information about the Umbria Region’s commitment to promoting reading among the young, from the earliest years of age[4]. Searches can be made by type of material and by age. It also features the projects in which the Umbria Region takes part, such as Nati per Leggere, through which, in close collaboration with the Associazione Culturale Pediatri (ACP) and the Associazione Italiana Biblioteche (AIB), a permanent regional project was launched. At the bottom of the portal there are links to the catalogue of the Umbria Region’s libraries and to the apps for Nati per Leggere and Umbria Cultura. The two apps can be downloaded from the portal via Google Play and the Apple Store.
Access to the Media Library On Line digital library[5] is available to those enrolled in the network of Umbria’s municipal libraries. Both access points, “Young People’s Libraries” and “Media Library On Line”, are also available from the homepage of the Umbria Cultura portal, in the sidebar on the right.

Next comes the “The Collections” section, which offers users various kinds of digital resources belonging to the collections held within Umbria’s museums. Here one can search by type of material, by place of culture/holding body and by year.
The type of material is divided into “painting”, “work”, “drawing”, “print”, “watermark”, “sculpture or monument”, “ceramic”, “fresco”, “miniature”, “funerary furnishing”, “puppet theatre” and “sketch/model”. These materials are uploaded to the site as digital photographs, and each comes with its location as well as a technical record describing it. Users may also write a comment on an individual object.
In the “Shared Memory Archive” section one can search and consult photographic documents, videos, records and interviews acquired thanks to the active and constant contribution of citizens who provided the material and authorised its use for the purposes of cultural dissemination[6]. The search can be carried out in three ways: a quick single-field search, an advanced search combining several fields, and a search by subject. The material held in the archive is part of a broader project of permanent cultural infrastructure. Begun in 2012 as a continuation of the photographic exhibition “La memoria nei cassetti” and promoted by the Department for Culture, Tourism and University of the Municipality of Perugia, and set up in collaboration and synergy with the Umbria Region, it is the first exhibition project founded entirely on the notion of the active contribution of the citizenry.
Each resource comes with a technical record and its descriptive metadata.
The “Historical Archives” section contains the descriptions of the archival collections and allows them to be consulted starting from the holding/producing bodies. The aim of this section, as stated, is to «deepen knowledge of the documentary heritage preserved in many municipal historical archives, in part of the State archive and in other Umbrian institutions».
Keyword searches can be run within the archival collections in either simple or advanced mode. To make searching easier for less experienced users as well, a link is provided to a glossary (made up of technical terms from the world of archives) prepared by the Lombardy Region.
On entering the archival collection of interest, we obtain the content of that collection which, in the sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen, we can filter by Place of culture/holding body, Author/producing body and Year. For each result, moreover, we will have the location, the descriptive record and any user comments.

Let us now describe the elements in the sidebar. The first is called “What’s On” and lets users see the events scheduled across the Umbria Region (exhibitions, conferences, talks and seminars). Next comes “Our Suggestions”, a selection of proposals of various kinds (itineraries, thematic routes, exhibitions, museums) addressed to users. After that we have the links to the “Young People’s Libraries”, to the Media Library On Line digital library, and to an exhibition, “Luce. Scoprendo l’Umbria”, currently running. Finally, as the last element of the sidebar, we find the comments left by users after reading a book (only some are visible, but those interested can click “read the other comments” to see all the rest).
Between the body and the footer, links have been placed to the Apple Store and Google Play for downloading the following applications: Nati per Leggere, Umbria Cultura, the museums and monuments app, and Digital Edition. The Nati per Leggere app is useful for finding books for children aged 0 to 6 held in the libraries of the Umbrian library network that take part in the national Nati per Leggere programme. The Umbria Cultura app makes it possible to browse the places of culture and the collections and to request the loan or reservation of books held in the libraries belonging to the Umbrian Regional Hub of the SBN. The museums and monuments app provides information about the museums and monuments across the region. Finally, the Umbria Musei Digital Edition app is an integral part of a project by the Umbria Region to bring content for the promotion of the museum system and the region onto innovative and, above all, portable devices.
Let us go on to describe the elements in the footer. First we see a Umbria Region copyright date of 2015. Then we find those elements essential to running a public digital environment: privacy, matters relating to the portal’s content, and the credits. Privacy is a very important aspect, serving to protect the personal data of the users who consult the portal. The digital content placed on the portal is governed by a Creative Commons 4.0 Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA) licence[7] , which allows users to modify, reproduce, distribute, communicate to the public, display in public, present, perform and recite the digital content (in any medium and format) for non-commercial purposes, subject to the obligation to give appropriate attribution of authorship (citing the author of the photographic image or third parties designated to receive attribution), to indicate any modifications to the work, and to provide the resource’s permalink and the link to the licence.

From the credits we learn that the Umbria Cultura project was carried out with the support of Umbria Digitale S.c.a.r.l. which handled the project management and implemented the technological platform. DM Cultura took care of the portal’s technical realisation. Thanks to the collaboration with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, the ICCU and the Regional Directorate for the Cultural and Landscape Heritage of Umbria, within the MuseiD-Italia project, an initial registry survey of the places of culture and a recovery of digital resources were carried out.

Then, in the lowest part of the footer, we find further information about copyright, the recommended browser and the cookie notice. In the copyright section we are informed that Sebina is software by DM Cultura s.r.l. and IBACN Emilia-Romagna Region; the recommended browsers include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.0. The recommendation given is always to use the most up-to-date version of the browser to ensure better results. The cookie notice explains to the user what cookies are, which types of cookie are used on the site, and how to disable them.

The audience the Umbria Cultura portal addresses is a varied one: from the users of Umbria’s libraries to all culture enthusiasts, researchers, students and tourists in search of museums, places of culture and libraries in Umbria. For the “Young People’s Libraries” portal the audience is more specific, since the content concerns certain age groups and some particular types of material. Should users be enrolled in a library of the Umbria Region’s library network, they can access a personal area through a login procedure within the portal. The access button is at the top of the site, in the header, on the right: the user must enter a reader code associated with their library card and issued by one of the network’s municipal libraries. The code serves to enter one’s personal page and view the user’s relationship with the network, current loans, the personal list and the reservations made on documents. The login procedure, however, appears somewhat complicated and unclear.

The copyright date as given on the portal is 2015; the site, however, is constantly updated, as can be seen in particular by looking at the “New in the Library” section and its related images, the collections that are regularly expanded, and the agenda in the sidebar, which flags new exhibitions, conferences, talks and seminars.

4. Some points for a first analysis

The analysis of Umbria Cultura shows that the portal is particularly attentive to the needs of the user. The following are some of the strengths identified:

• the presence of quality information, materials and resources in a world, that of the internet, where processed content often goes unchecked. Here the resources’ identifying data (metadata) have been entered by experts who guarantee their reliability and scholarly quality;
• the scrolling images beneath the main sections make the user’s first contact with the homepage friendlier;
• the colours chosen for the homepage and the portal’s other pages are understated and allow the content to be read clearly;
• the site’s architecture is simple and clear and allows even the less experienced to navigate and search: one senses that considerable work went into building the portal so as to make it intuitive for users;
• the page layout stays the same across all sections (the sidebar menu “Browse the results” does change, because each section needs its own filters for searching, it changes in content but not in design), and this keeps the user from getting lost; thanks to the constant cross-references and links within the pages, one can move from one section to another without much difficulty;
• a single portal brings together the main information concerning the Umbria Region’s cultural heritage (missing are the holdings of those institutions that do not belong to the regional library network);
• the collaboration between museums, archives and libraries (MAB)[8] is clearly visible and represents an important aspect of cooperation among the region’s cultural institutions;

One less well-tended aspect, already noted above, is access to the reader’s personal area. I consider this service very important, because it enables the use of remote services, for example reserving a book (in order to borrow it) or renewing a loan about to expire. The procedure for obtaining access is unclear, and no contact is given for requesting information. My advice would be to provide at least an email address and a telephone number for users.

The Umbria Cultura application is user friendly and, from the very first screen, offers a number of useful functions and services. One of these concerns the physical location of the resource we need: if we have an active GPS device with us, it will point us to the nearest library holding that resource. Among the functions on offer are augmented reality, for discovering places of culture in an evocative way, and the searching of books by scanning a barcode. This last function, however, requires downloading another application.

During the search stage, once the book has been found and the libraries holding it identified, the availability of the resource within the library is not always clear.

The application is easy to navigate, even if it lacks links to: Nati per Leggere, with the Media Library On Line digital library, the Shared Memory Archive and the “Young People’s Libraries” portal (searches in the children’s catalogue are possible in any case). It should be said that Nati per Leggere and Media Library On Line have their own dedicated application.

For access to the user’s personal page, the same problems already found in the portal are present. Among the settings there are links to the institutional portal of the Umbria Region, culture sector[9] and to the Umbria Cultura portal.

Notes

[1] Cf. <https://www.library.kent.edu/criteria-evaluating-web-resources>. I was able to try out Kent State University’s evaluation method during the practical exercises carried out as part of the Digital Library course taught by Prof. Paul Gabriele Weston at the Vatican School of Library Science.

[2] https://www.sebina.it/SebinaNet/portali-sebinayou/

[3]On new-generation catalogues, see: Andrea Capaccioni, Ricerche bibliografiche. Banche dati e biblioteche in Rete, Sant’Arcangelo di Romagna, Maggioli, 2018, pp. 11-12; Mauro Guerrini, La biblioteca spiegata agli studenti universitari, Milan, Editrice Bibliografica, 2012, pp. 75-85.

[4] http://big.umbriacultura.it/SebinaOpac/.do?sysb=big

[5] Media Library On Line is a network of public, academic and school libraries for digital lending that offers its users thousands of e-books, databases, encyclopaedias, newspapers and periodicals, music, audiobooks and films. To find out more: Sabrina Boldrini, Valentina Gamboni, Risorse elettroniche, in Andrea Capaccioni, Ricerche bibliografiche. Banche dati e biblioteche in Rete, Sant’Arcangelo di Romagna, Maggioli, 2018, pp. 45-47. See also the Media Library On Line website: https://www.medialibrary.it/home/cover.aspx; users of the Umbrian library network should log in at this address: https://umbria.medialibrary.it/home/cover.aspx

[6] http://www.umbriacultura.it/SebinaOpac/article/chi-siamo/chisiamo?sysb=UM1AM

[7] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.it

[8] MAB was created in 2011 through the Associazione Italiana Biblioteche (AIB), the Associazione Nazionale Archivistica Italiana (ANAI) and the International Council of Museums – Italian National Committee (ICOM), which set up a permanent coordinating body to explore the prospects for collaboration among the professions and the institutions in which archive, library and museum professionals work. For more information see the website: http://www.mab-italia.org/; for the Umbria Region see the website: http://www.mab-italia.org/index.php/comitatati/mab-umbria

[9] www.regione.umbria.it/cultura

Stefano Passerini is a librarian and a scholar of Documentation at the Department of Letters – Languages, Literatures and Ancient and Modern Civilisations of the University of Perugia.