Presentation at the DISH 2009 conference in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
The paper discusses preliminary findings and observations from an action research study on a participatory digital library and data archive for cultural heritage data with a specific focus on building archaeology. The project aims to develop a combined digital repository and collaboratory for research and cultural heritage management with a special emphasis on participation and semantically rich relations between individual digital artifacts. The discussed digital library is based on semantic wiki technology and developed together with archaeologists from a small Nordic archaeology consultancy. The findings of the study indicate that the principal challenges associated with the life-cycle approach relate to the paradox of formality and informality of documentation and to the implications the system has on the customary procedures of cultural heritage information work.