5.   Social media and open archives

In order to activate the processes of co-creation of value by users, it is essential to use storytelling. High levels of engagement are achieved through stories. To make the most of the potential of this technique, it is necessary to use social media as through the network it is possible to make known the cultural heritage that would otherwise remain closed within the institutions that host it.

Furthermore, social networks represent the virtual environment in which the digital native generations spend most of their time, both for entertainment but also to search for information. The goal is to communicate with the target audience, through an informal tone typical of social networks, which allows you to engage and capture a much wider target.

How is it possible to open the archives through social networks?

• Periodically posting photos of documents that otherwise could never be viewed;
• Publishing previews of a new project, in order to create curiosity and therefore a reaction in the audience;

 • Inviting users to share their experience on their social profile through a selfie taken during their visits to the museum with the most significant document of the museum itinerary in the background;

• By creating a contest through which the user is invited to capture the sense of the archive through a photo posted on social media. It will be the general social audience to decide the finalists of the race and then establish a winner who will have a prize;

• Periodically publishing stories of what happens in the archives to make known the figure of the archivist and the research activity that he carries out, considering that he is often a figure of whom little or nothing is known.

 

In addition to social media, an additional tool that allows you to activate a great circuit of interest is the development of apps and the practice of gamification as it is possible to activate even more a strong involvement of the public and make it interact with the archives. in a playful way, it produces and receives personalized content through geolocation, the device used and the space-time condition in which it is located.

The game could exploit the advantages of augmented reality and immerse the visitor at 360 degrees in the archive through a treasure hunt steeped in the mysteries that the archive offers. Purely by way of example, one could think of exploiting the mystery around the Radolovich altarpiece; a document by Historical Archives of Bank f Naples in which a disappeared masterpiece of Caravaggio is described. The visitor, thanks to the virtual encounter with some characters involved in this story, who would suggest some clues to the visitor himself, could discover what really happened to the Radolovich altarpiece.