Designing Sustainable Participation in Visual Cultural Heritage Platforms

This white paper provides practical and strategic guidance for professionals and decision-makers in GLAM institutions, Digital Humanities projects, and citizen science or citizen humanities initiatives who seek to move beyond interactive presentation toward sustainable participation. It clarifies the distinction between interactivity and participation, identifies the infrastructural conditions under which participation becomes durable, and translates research and project-based experience into actionable recommendations. The argument is informed by the PIA project and by broader debates around IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework), Linked Art, WADM (Web Annotation Data Model), LOUD (Linked Open Usable Data), FAIR(Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics).