Discovering the local in national cultural heritage collections. How web maps can help the UK public engage with their ‘own places’

ABSTRACT Identity is a critical influence on the public’s engagement with cultural heritage. This article emphasises the role of geographical scale in this relationship examining how the presentation of local heritage can foster meaningful engagement with collections. The geographical information embedded in digital collections – such as where objects were made or the locations they depict and describe – can help varied audiences to discover digital heritage records that are significant to them. Yet the interactive web maps used by cultural heritage organisations have not presented the breadth of collections effectively. Audience research conducted by the Locating a National Collection project offered insights into how the presentation of local heritage using web maps can broaden engagement. A survey explored the values, motivations and identities of the UK public in relation to geography and web technologies. ‘Pretotypes’ or sketches of interfaces prompted focus groups to offer insights into interface design and the suitability of collections. The public were not only interested in heritage connected to the area where they reside but also a range of familiar locations drawn from memory, genealogy and community, termed their ‘own places’. Only particular collections offer geographical information of suitable quality and distribution to support engagement with familiar locations at a local scale. This user-centred approach can help organisations to design web maps that help audiences discover the parts of collections they find meaningful. The article offers the first step in a pathway to achieving social impact such as community building through digital collections.


Introduction
Geography and place are connected intimately to the diverse senses of identity and belonging that exist in twenty-first century societies.As Marco Antonisch summarises, 'The question 'Who am I?' cannot be isolated from the other question 'Where do I belong'' (Antonsich, 2010, p. 646).Identity and its intersection with geographical scales such as the global, national or local is a critical influence on how the public perceive and engage with cultural heritage (Ashworth, 2013;Higgins & Douglas, 2020).The connections that can be traced between cultural heritage and geographical locations are manifold.Heritage sites or buildings are managed for the purposes of tourism, education and preservation.The objects, documents, and other records that constitute the collections of galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) are connected to the locations where they were made and used or those they depict and describe.Web technologies offer opportunities to harness this geographical information to present collections to the general public in an accessible format.For example, interactive web maps have been used to visualise a variety of data including cultural heritage collections since technologies like Google Maps first appeared on the web in the early to mid-2000s.Over the decades since these early 'mash-ups' first appeared, maps and other location-based technologies such as mobile GPS have become deeply embedded in our lives.This article examines how cultural heritage organisations (CHOs) can build on the public's confidence with this technology to broaden engagement with their collections.The research has been conducted as part of the Locating a National Collection project (LaNC) and funded through the Towards a National Collection (TaNC) programme, a major investment in research by UKRI's Arts and Humanities Research Council.The programme aims to 'break down the barriers that exist between the UK's outstanding cultural heritage collections, with the aim of … encouraging the public to explore them in new ways.'(Towards a national collection, n.d.).This article adopts a user-centred approach to address this aim, drawing on the results of LaNC's audience research into the UK public's values, motivations and behaviours and their relationships to geography.It describes the public's 'own places', a set of familiar and meaningful locations drawn from residence, memory, genealogy and community that are connected, but not equal to, the local scale.It explores how presenting geographical information embedded within digital collections at a local geographical scale can enable users to discover cultural heritage records that are relevant to an understanding of their 'own places'.In examining this process, the article describes how CHOs can select collections and design web maps that engage varied audiences.

Geographical information, scale and cultural heritage
The social role of cultural heritage is founded on an understanding of 'the past as being integral both to individual and communal representations of identity and its connotations of providing human existence with meaning, purpose and value' (Graham et al., 2000, p. 19).Heritage is selected and presented for particular political, economic or cultural purposes and is therefore inseparable from wider structures of power, legitimisation and conflict.Geographical scale has been fundamental to understanding 'strategies for the shaping of particular place-identities through the use of heritage' (Ashworth, 2013, p. 14) with heritage's role in the legitimisation of identities at the scale of the nationstate being a commonly-cited example (for an overview see Winter, 2015).However, relations between identity and heritage can be understood at varied geographical scales.These include the supra-national, encompassing global designations such as UNESCO world heritage sites, as well as the sub-national, encompassing regional or local scales (Ashworth & Larkham, 2013;Timothy, 2014, p. 34).The relationship between existing heritage collections and the latter forms the focus of this article.Definitions of local scale have been based on geographical concepts including the 'sub-national region, the city (whether defined as a whole or in terms of its component districts), and the site' (Graham et al., 2000, p. 197).The politicisation of the term 'local' has been recognised in the UK, both in acknowledging that a 'localism' agenda in government policy has economic implications and through highlighting the dangers of marginalising groups who are not mainstream (Neal, 2015, p. 359;Watkins, 2021).Many definitions of 'local' have focused on geography or physical space, however, the term's meaning is, perhaps, inseparable from that of 'community'.Technologies and global connectivity allow communities to be geographically dispersed and this move beyond proximity in physical space has offered new opportunities in community building (Ciolfi et al., 2017;Higgins & Douglas, 2020).Despite these complexities, the term 'local' has been commonly applied to heritage.Economic studies of tourism have examined how cities develop singular identities, acting as place-products for in-person visits (Ashworth, 2013, p. 23;Timothy, 2014).Inter-relations between local and national scales in terms of tourism, nationalism or conservation have formed another area of interest with the importance of a plurality of voices within national debates emphasised (Al-Natour, 2017, p. 477;Graham et al., 2000, pp. 204-207;Mydland & Grahn, 2012).On the other hand, recognition of the value of heritage as a resource for community building has grown.A set of initiatives has focused on active participation in the co-creation, curation and interpretation of cultural heritage both in-person through community groups or online through community-generated digital content or crowd-sourcing (Bonacchi et al., 2019;Ciolfi et al., 2017;Higgins & Douglas, 2020).Participation in these initiatives by 'communities of identity' or 'communities of belonging' (Antonsich, 2010, p. 653) is often predicated on geographical proximity (Liew et al., 2020, p. 11).
This article draws on the complex and multifarious concepts of local heritage discussed in this scholarship to explore how audiences might engage with the collections of CHOs that LaNC worked with.Predominantly national institutions, these organisations fall into two categories: the first are custodians of the historic environment (HEOs) who manage and record sites alongside associated metadata for the purposes of conservation, research and visitors (Historic Environment Scotland (HES), Historic England (HE), English Heritage, National Trust (NT), Historic Royal Palaces).The second are GLAMs whose collections encompass objects (British Library (BL), Portable Antiquities Scheme).In this article, references to CHOs' collections refer to digital representations in the form of metadata and web pages.Termed 'records', they include representations of objects, documents, sites or buildings, for example, and contain digitised or born-digital content like images or sounds, structured data, text or URLs.These records feature a variety of geographical information.HEOs' records contain coordinates representing the sites they manage and lend themselves to visualisation making maps a mainstay of HEOs' websites in the UK.Examples such as HES's Canmore (Canmore, n.d.) and HE's Heritage Gateway (Heritage Gateway, n.d.) bring together historic environment data from several sources using map servers and proprietary base maps from Ordnance Survey.On the other hand, the geographical information in GLAMs' metadata is more often toponyms whilst digital text content might include postcodes or addresses.Presenting these locations on web maps relies on the derivation of geospatial data: points, lines or polygons based on coordinates.This extra processing step makes it difficult for many GLAMs to create visualisations systematically.For example, the BL have created maps focused on individual projects for many years using proprietary and open-source technologies including Google Fusion Tables (Google Workspace, n.d.) and more recently MapboxGL (see MapLibre, n.d.) and OpenStreetMap (OpenStreetMap, n.d.) for the Georeferencer project (Georeferencer, n.d.).Both HEOs and GLAMs have used web maps as an innovative way to present collections and as a method of encouraging community-generated content related to collections.Although this article has implications for the latter, the focus is specifically on presenting collections.
Heritage has been defined as the 'contemporary use of the past' (Graham et al., 2000, p. 2) and these records, and the locations they contain, are the result of choices.They are not objective or value-free but created for particular purposes making them the product of institutional cultures.CHOs have invested heavily in the creation of digital collections and monitor usage through several channels including web analytics and citations.Whilst well-usedfor example, the BL's digitised images from the King's Topographical Collection have been viewed 52 million times on Flickr by May 2022 (King's Topographical Collection, n.d.) -CHOs remain eager to increase usage and to realise greater value through innovative applications.The breadth and heterogeneity of collections offer opportunities for CHOs to democratise access and engage wider audiences (Terras et al., 2021, p. 9).This article argues that understanding 'meaning', 'significance' or 'value' is critical to their effective selection and presentation.The significance of heritage is often defined hierarchically in reference to the supra-national, national, and sub-national geographical scales introduced earlier in the context of identity (Ashworth, 2013, p. 13;Timothy, 2014, p. 34).Local significance has been defined in opposition to broader geographical scales with 'the aesthetically spectacular and nationally unique' contrasted with the 'more modest, mundane, and commonplace artefacts, buildings, sites, and areas' (Graham et al., 2000, p. 204).Yet significance is also highly personal and contextually dependent: individual motivations, values, and identities are defining factors (Ciolfi et al., 2017;Timothy, 2014, p. 34).This article contends that geographical information embedded in records can help the public discover heritage that they find significant.Web maps can be used to realise this opportunity by presenting heritage in an accessible and engaging manner.Through exploring these technological issues with potential audiences, the article explores the concept of 'local' itself and its meaning for different sections of the UK public today.

Aims and methods
LaNC's audience research has provided insights into how the public relate to cultural heritage.The research has been led by the NT working with STRAT7 Research Bods, a market research company who used the 'Our Place' online platform.The research investigated three areas: . Attitudes, motivations, and behaviour around cultural heritage.
. Values the UK public hold and their relationships to place and geography.
. Use of location-based digital technologies (e.g., maps, GPS) in cultural heritage and beyond.
It divided into two interlinked phases: a public survey followed by focus-group interviews.The survey consisted of questions answered over the web to gather quantitative insights.Complexity in the public's attitudes, values and uses of technology meant gathering qualitative evidence in the second round of focus-group interviews was essential.This article focuses on a subset of findings in two areas, local heritage as a driver of engagement and uses of interactive web maps.Interactive web maps, as defined here, are typified by proprietary apps such as Google or Bing maps or open-source Javascript libraries like Leaflet (Leaflet, n.d.) or MapLibre (MapLibre, n.d.).Sometimes referred to as 'slippy' or 'dynamic' maps, they offer functions like pan and zoom and are often based on Open Geospatial Consortium standards such as Web Map Tile Service (OGC, n.d.).

Public-survey methodology
STRAT7 Research Bods designed a survey consisting of 33 questions to be completed online by members of the public between 14 and 18 December 2020.Questions and resulting data are available on Zenodo (Rees & Vitale, 2021).The survey was sent out to 1078 people recruited via Survey Bods, an online panel for research in the UK.Taking an average of 12 min to complete, participation was incentivised with a small cash gift.Age, gender and location were captured, and nationally representative quotas based on the latest available Office of National Statistics figures ensured the sample reflected the UK population.The sample also contained a broad range of ethnicities.Screening questions gathered useful demographic and socio-economic data alongside general attitudinal information.To 'qualify' to complete the whole survey respondents had to be aged 18 or above, live in the UK, and have an interest in history/heritage.The question 'How interested would you say you are in History/Heritage' was posed to 1078 people.Respondents were left to define history/heritage as they saw fit.The 8% that said they were 'not at all interested' were 'terminated' from the survey.Only the 92% that responded as 'somewhat, quite, or very interested' in history/heritage continued meaning 992 completed the survey.The focus was therefore on audiences with some interest in heritage, a group that held promise as potential users of TaNC's digital outputs.

Public-survey discussion and results
Questions that followed the screening divided into three sections: 'current technology use and behaviour', 'using location services' and 'current heritage attitudes and behaviours'.Survey responses as a whole demonstrated how deeply embedded digital location services were in people's lives, particularly through the prevalence of mobile GPS.Responses evidenced a strong appetite for accessing heritage connected to locations like visitor sites or where people reside and an enthusiasm for innovative forms of heritage presentation using digital technologies.Whilst the survey was wide-ranging, this discussion focuses specifically on local heritage and web maps.Beginning with the former, the survey examined respondents' values and their relationships to geography.Question C4 defined 'local' as 'the place and local area that you now consider to be your home (e.g., county, city, suburb, town or village)'.60% agreed that they 'identify strongly with this place' whilst 54% agreed that they 'feel well connected to the local community of this place'.The relationship between these responses, values, and heritage attitudes is complex.
Would heritage with local connections appeal to the slim majority who identified strongly with where they consider to be their home and its community?Perhaps the significant minority who did not strongly identify have a different attitude to local heritage?Opportunities might exist to build a sense of identity and community amongst this significant minority through heritage.The survey went on to investigate attitudes to local history and heritage without defining the concept explicitly.74% of respondents agreed with the statement 'I'm interested in the history of my local area' (C3.2).This was the highest level of agreement amongst nine heritage statements (C3).For example, the level of agreement was significantly higher than the 55% that agreed with the statement 'I regularly visit places relating to history/heritage' (C3.1).Yet only 51% agreed with the statement 'I'm more interested in history/heritage if it is local to me or places I used to live' (C3.7).Although the results evidence public curiosity towards local heritage, attitudes varied greatly.The format of our online survey hindered more nuanced exploration and definitions of 'local' were discussed in focus groups.
Survey results also demonstrated the extent to which web maps pervaded the lives of respondents.98% had used online map services in the past whilst 65% had used them in the last week (S6).Maps were the third most frequently used online tool after online videos or search (S6).Whilst this pattern might be expected from respondents to an online survey, responses nevertheless suggest maps present significant opportunities for the heritage sector (Figure 1).
The primary use of maps were closed-ended tasks based on constrained functionality (Roth, 2013, p. 64).Navigation or information retrieval were most popular: 79% used maps to plan journeys from one point to another (wayfinding) (B4) whilst 64% searched for the location of a specific place by typing most of the time (B6).The features that most respondents liked to have available complemented these use cases.Around 60% mentioned different view options (e.g., satellite, street view), the ability to measure distances and practical information about places (e.g., opening hours, pictures, reviews) (B5).The use of web maps for open-ended objectives that were curiosity-driven or exploratory was less common.For example, our survey demonstrated that only 42% used maps to 'browse (i.e., just to have a look without a clear purpose)' (B4) (Figure 2).Despite this behaviour, survey responses suggested that opportunities to build new uses of location-based technologies exist.When asked 'Which of the following types of online map interfaces for searching and finding places are you aware of?' only 38% had heard of 'Map functions on heritage/ history websites (e.g., Historic England map of listed buildings, History Pin)' (B2a).Whilst 27% had used 'Map functions on heritage/history websites' (B2b), 85% of those who had used such map functions enjoyed their experience (B3).Other questions that examined exploratory uses for maps in heritage and beyond also met positive responses (C2b).In contrast, only a subset of respondents were interested in active participation.When canvassed for opinions on heritage interfaces with a local theme, those that had a contributory or participatory element were less appealing than those without (C2b).Only 23% liked to have the ability to leave reviews on map sites available.Of 10 features this was the second lowest level of interest (B6).Turning to non-digital forms of engagement only 21% of respondents participated in groups/societies related to history/heritage.Passive engagement with the web or other media was considerably more popular (C3.3).These responses tentatively suggested that, even amongst those that have some interest in heritage, only a core group of around 20% were motivated to actively participate.This finding aligned with studies that conclude 'active participants in heritage crowdsourcing are not crowds' (Bonacchi et al., 2019, p. 12) or that have examined the role of trust and reciprocity in community-generated content (Tasker & Liew, 2020, p. 404).Curiosity towards heritage with local connections might offer opportunities to broaden active participation.

Focus-group methodology
The results of the survey provided an overview of attitudes, values and behaviours around cultural heritage, the web and location.Our next step was to run a series of focus groups to gather qualitative information and develop a more nuanced understanding of the topics introduced in the survey.We organised four two-hour remote sessions in total, each included six to eight members of the public.Participants were selected based on audience profiles constructed from survey results in two areas: interest in heritage and engagement or competence with digital technology.Our hypothesis was that those with a lower interest in heritage and technological competency might be less likely to engage with heritage on the web and use our project's outputs.Feedback from this profile would be particularly useful in informing our design decisions and 'facilitating wider and better-informed public engagement' (Towards a national collection, n.d.).Audience survey questions were grouped into two subsets, ten attributes/statements defined higher to lower interest in heritage and ten defined higher to lower technological engagement/competence (Vitale et al., 2021).See Figure 3. Responses were assigned a numerical value whereby a stronger level of agreement or greater frequency of usage scored higher.The values were then summed and respondents placed on two axes based on their total 'interest score' for cultural heritage and an 'engagement/competence score' for digital technology.Two profiles from along these axes were chosen as the basis of focus-group recruitment as shown in Figure 3.The first, Profile A, had a high interest in heritage and high technological engagement/competence.We hypothesised that respondents from this profile were most likely to engage with heritage on the web.Technological engagement/competence does not necessarily correlate with engagement/competence in using web maps, and the relationship between the two was explored in focus groups.Profile A constituted 11% of respondents to the survey.Profile C were chosen as the second group.A middling interest in heritage, and middling technological engagement/competence suggested profile C were less likely to engage with heritage on the web.However, encompassing 28% of the sample, profile C was not only the largest profile but also the next-door neighbour to Profile A. They therefore offered opportunities to expand the audience of digital collections and to draw contrasts with a more motivated audience.The focus groups made plain that variation in attitudes between profiles is complex and that commonalities exist.Therefore, the article highlights differences in attitudes between profiles A and C only where they are relevant.Two of the four focus-group sessions included participants from profile A and two included those from profile C. A specialist recruitment agency found and selected potential participants based on these 20 questions.Not all participants were respondents to the original public survey.Alongside the aforementioned profiling, answers to additional screening questions ensured that each focus group contained participants from a variety of UK regions, of different ages, at least two BAME participants and at least two participants from lower socio-economic backgrounds.Focus-group participants received payment for their participation.

Focus-group opening discussions
Each focus-group session was divided into two parts.They opened with a discussion that encompassed participants' attitudes, behaviours and values in relation to heritage, the web and location.An exploration of how web maps might be used to present heritage followed drawing on stimulus in the form of simple sketches of existing and future interfaces.Although the opening discussions were wide-ranging, the focus here is on insights into the locations that participants found personally significant.
Participants were asked open-ended questions that allowed them to open up and discuss concepts like place, identity, belonging, value and meaning and their relationships to heritage and the local geographical scale.A pattern of repeated references to particular types of locations emerged across the focus groups.
. The first, 'where I live now', was defined as the house, street, neighbourhood or area where participants currently reside.This equates broadly to 'the place and local area that you now consider to be your home' defined in our earlier survey, although perhaps focused on a smaller geographical area.Television programmes such as the BBC's 'A House Through Time' (BBC, n.d.) were cited as inspiring participants to take an interest in the past of the building in which they live and the surrounding area.It became clear that the boundaries of 'where I live now' cannot be quantified in absolute terms and might differ significantly between urban and rural areas.Restrictions on movement due to the Covid-19 pandemic had affected how participants identified with 'where they live now'. .The second, 'where I grew up', referred to childhood homes, streets, neighbourhoods or areas.Participants enjoyed looking back through time at the locations they knew from childhood.Motivations like memory and nostalgia brought additional layers of meaning to their current lives.Whilst there was an interest in any former residence our focus-group work demonstrated a particular connection with childhood. .The third was 'where my family came from'.For many, especially those with migrant heritage or diaspora communities, delving into the history of the places and experiences of ancestors and relatives appealed strongly.This appeal included formal genealogical research alongside more casual browsing.For instance, learning more about the period in which a parent migrated to the UK from Australia was of great interest to one participant, as was researching the small town in Ireland where another participant's family descended from.
References to the three types of location were quite consistent across focus groups and profiles A and C. The three will be referred to as participants' 'own places' in the remainder of the article.Focus-group responses made plain that people do not simply identify with 'where I live now' when considering the local geographical scale.Rather, the range of participants' 'own places' was defined by familiarity with geography and broader than expected.This diversity reflects the complex web of intersecting values and identities that exist in the UK today.Moreover, connections between records and these 'own places' engendered personal curiosity to delve deeper into collections.Connections with 'own places' piqued interest in records that might otherwise be uninteresting.Participants also identified with heritage connected to other locations, a common example being sites of national significance situated elsewhere in the UK that they had visited.However, the findings from focus groups suggest such attitudes were less personal and not so strongly held.

Focus-group stimulus and 'pretotypes'
Following opening discussions, we used stimulus to prompt focus-group reflection on approaches to presenting heritage using interactive web maps.Stimulus took the form of sketches, 'Powerpoint-style' slides used to communicate simple ideas to participants such as interface functionality and underlying information.Their design was informed by insights from our public survey.After explaining each, we checked understanding, canvassed opinions and tabled more specific questions concerning user experience expectations: what participants would do, where they would click, their expectations and desires.The stimulus offered a method of focusing discussion on interface development, thus collecting valuable feedback before undertaking labour-intensive development work.Stimulus came in two forms: first, existing location-based interfaces, and second, 'pretotypes', interface ideas that do not yet exist but which LaNC might create (Savoia, 2011).Five were presented to focus groups, participants were not made aware that some existed, and others did not.Two belonged to existing digital projects, 'HistoryPin' (Historypin, n.d.) and a 'Street Near You' (Morley, 2018a), and three were pretotypes ('Walking Tours', 'VisitPlus', and 'Heritage for All').Each presented an idealised view of a few features intended to inform the practicalities of interface development.Two stimuli provided insights into how audiences engage with their 'own places'.The first was an existing digital project, 'A Street Near You' and the second, a pretotype, 'Heritage for All'.Both drew on interactive web maps as a dissemination format.

A Street Near You
'A Street Near You' (Morley, 2018a) was developed by James Morley using Open Street Map (OpenStreetMap, n.d.) and Leaflet (Leaflet, n.d.), and launched in November 2018 (Morley, 2018b).Connecting data from several digitised archives including the Commonwealth War Graves Commission casualty records, the Lives of the First World War centenary project, and the Imperial War Museum's collections, 'A Street Near You' enables users to search and view address information mentioned in the records of soldiers who died in World War 1 (WW1) on an interactive web map (Morley, 2020).Our 'A Street Near You' stimulus encompassed two Powerpoint slides and verbal   (Morley, 2018a).
introduction that communicated three concepts: the type of locations featured, the WW1 theme and the ability to discover people (Figures 4 and 5).
First and foremost, our stimulus communicated that users could discover soldiers' records connected to their 'own places'.Sadly, the large number of soldiers that died in WW1 and their geographical distribution across the UK makes it likely that users could find records connected to their 'own places'.Furthermore, addresses found in records provide precise locations, often extant buildings readily connected to accurate coordinates.Connections to familiar, physical locations were particularly meaningful for participants, imbuing soldiers' records with significance.Second, the stimulus communicated that 'A Street Near You' provided access to details of people including location of burial, regiment, links to resources and, crucially, images.Participants remarked that personal details brought history to life and that tangible connections to their 'own places' elicited emotion.Third, the slide communicated the WW1 theme.Interest in WW1 varied, and the explicit focus alienated some participants, stimulating debate over themes that might be of interest.Others, however, welcomed the clarity offered by a specific theme.Participants also noted drawbacks with 'A Street Near You'.A lack of historical significance was a barrier for some.Participants from profile C, the middle interest group, were motivated to engage with history more by notable figures and events in records of national significance than the everyday records provided by 'A Street Near You'.Moreover, there were concerns that 'A Street Near You' would not warrant repeat usage.Whilst connections with familiar locations were a powerful motivation, participants felt one or two visits might be sufficient to exhaust content of interest.As their 'own places' were limited in number, participants were curious about using a single location as a starting point for an interactive journey.For some, a specific set of collections from a single type of organisation, connected to a specific theme, might limit long-term usage.

Heritage for all
The 'Heritage for All' pretotype presented locations connected to a diverse range of records on an interactive web map.The pretotype consisted of a single Powerpoint slide as shown in Figure 6 and could have been built using Leaflet (Leaflet, n.d.) or proprietary technologies.However, following the focus groups, LaNC implemented the pretotype as an interactive web map application (Heritage for All, n.d.) based on MapLibre (MapLibre, n.d.) and Open Street Map (OpenStreetMap, n.d.) open-source technologies.The pretotype was explicitly presented as an opportunity for users to explore the 'place where they live now', the map was populated with points representing precise locations like buildings, monuments, parks, or streets.By clicking on locations, users could access information and links to the collections' web pages of GLAMs and HEOs.The pretotype depicted a map of a London borough populated with picture and text previews of content such as findspots of ancient coins, extant and disappeared historic buildings, blue plaques, archival documents, and literary references from famous novels amongst other records.Much of this heritage would be typically defined as 'locally' not 'nationally' significant (Timothy, 2014, p. 34).Inspired by 'A Street Near You', 'Heritage for All' motivated users to engage by helping them to discover records connected to familiar locations.However, in contrast, 'Heritage for All' did not focus on a single theme or collection but rather sought to understand attitudes to the presentation of diverse records together.
Benefits include serendipitous discovery and participants were familiar with this approach in social media feeds like Facebook or TikTok (Liew et al., 2020, p. 11).Participants valued consolidation in a single resource and the unexpected co-contextualisation that resulted, such as literary references connected to buildings.The presentation of precise locations connected to the modern physical environment led participants to suggest 'Heritage for All' might inspire, inform and stimulate reflection on in-person visits around their current residence and their 'own places' more widely.The potential for discovery and adventure was discussed enthusiastically and terms such as 'disappeared' or 'vanished monuments and buildings' inspired younger audiences.
Participants also remarked on the potential to research a broader set of locations beyond 'where I currently reside'.For instance, a participant from Northern Ireland with an interest in the Isle of Man had relied on local historians, libraries, and Facebook groups resulting in significant investment of labour.'Heritage for All' would offer a single point of access to information concerning the island's history and people.Participants raised concerns about the quality and veracity of the information presented making uptake for research contingent on curation by contributing organisations.As with 'A Street Near You', participants cited repeat usage as a limitation and asked why return after your 'own places' had been explored?The diversity of collections was confusing for some, who suggested that interactive features alongside curated themes or narratives might add appeal.Yet the emergence of several practical use cases encompassing on and off-site uses including research, discovery, and adventure, provides strong evidence that varied audiences would use the platform.These use cases attest to the flexibility of underlying geospatial data and their potential to overcome challenges in heritage engagement.The overriding feedback was that presenting users with diverse collections connected to familiar locations was a hugely compelling and largely unmet need.The passionate responses evoked by 'Heritage for All' might have been influenced by Covid-19 travel restrictions that were in place when focus groups were held invigorating interest in local exploration.

Discussion
Both 'A Street Near You' and 'Heritage for All' were presented to focus groups as interfaces for discovering records connected with the 'place where I live now'.Participants found the presentation of heritage at this 'local scale' rewarding as it prompted engagement with parts of collections that held significance and meaning.Whilst the public survey offered indications of this interest, the passionate responses to our two stimulus examples provided compelling evidence.This warm reception might well be due to changes in patterns of movement wrought by the Covid-19 restrictions in place during 2020 and 2021 that led the public to reconnect with the neighbourhoods or areas in which they reside.People have spent more time exploring where they live developing an appetite to understand more about the streets and buildings near them and the people who used to live and work in them.Similarly, participants were unable to visit other 'own places' but could reconnect digitally.In contrast, stimulus that presented heritage connected to less familiar parts of the UK such as locations to visit were viewed less favourably and without the energetic reception that greeted 'A Street Near You' and 'Heritage for All'.This model of engagement relies on familiarity with locations to present significant heritage and thus suffers from an inherent drawback.Although focus-group participants expressed interest in locations beyond where they currently reside, including a diverse range of their 'own places' drawn from memory, genealogy and other forms of identity, the number of familiar locations for each was relatively few, limiting repeat usage.Several potential opportunities to overcome this drawback exist.First, connecting records through other entities such as person, subject, or narrative could help users to discover further meaningful records.Onward connections between records and locations can facilitate greater interactivity, serendipitous discovery and allow audiences to pursue personal interests further (Liew et al., 2020, p. 11;McKay et al., 2019McKay et al., , p. 1392)).Careful implementation of more elaborate functionality might encourage repeat usage.Opportunities for active engagement such as contributions of community-generated content, open-ended interaction, or animations encourage deeper engagement (Whitelaw, 2015, p. 3;Windhager et al., 2019, p. 2).Such functionality might allow interactive maps to occupy downtime rather than simply function as a 'tool' focused on accomplishing particular tasks or goals (Whitelaw, 2015, p. 12).Yet our audience research demonstrates that many do not typically use web maps in this way and their design is not necessarily suited to the addition of such functionality.Rather, our survey suggests that web maps are commonly employed to complete closed-ended tasks such as finding directions or relationships between locations whilst browsing occurs less often.Moreover, although rewarding, implementing this functionality for diverse CHO collections would be complex and potentially expensive.
The comparison of an existing interface 'A Street Near You' with a pretotype, 'Heritage for All', stimulated reflection on underlying technical requirements which are, of course, critical to implementation.Only certain collections contain geographical information that can support users living in diverse regions of the UK to engage with their 'own places'.The quality and distribution of derived geospatial data govern this suitability.First, characteristics of the distribution of derived data including extent, dispersion and volume determine the likelihood of discovering records connected to familiar locations (Yuan et al., 2020).Users can only discover locations that lie within a dataset's geographical extent thus datasets that cover larger areas offer greater potential for cross-regional engagement.A dispersed distribution pattern within the extent is desirable as clustered data limit discovery to those geographical areas.Finally, only large datasets, including tens if not hundreds of thousands of locations, can provide the broad geographical sweep to enable users living in many regions to discover a familiar location.The challenge of visualising such datasets in a typical web browser can be overcome by map technologies based on WebGL (Web Graphics Library) (see MapLibre, n.d.).Such large heritage datasets will inevitably contain records that are less impressive yet locally significant.Curation of records at this scale is problematic.Second, stimulus feedback demonstrates that in terms of data quality, the precision or resolution of geospatial data is paramount (Veregin, 1999, p. 181).Participants commented that connections between records and specific locations in the physical environment such as a familiar building, park, street corner or crossroads pique interest and bring records to life.Such connections rely on deriving precise geospatial data.For example, toponyms that refer to a country, region or city are too imprecise to be meaningful at a 'local' scale even when aligned with a gazetteer.Moreover, the challenges for visualising toponyms or places as polygons are well attested (Blaschke et al., 2018).Rather, only geographical information such as addresses, grid references or postcodes can support the derivation of accurate geospatial data, namely points or small polygons based on coordinates (Veregin, 1999).The extent to which these precise locations are available from different time periods or rural as well as urban areas requires further investigation.
The geographical information found in the collections of different CHOs meet these criteria to differing degrees.On the one hand the historic environment is managed at the level of the site making location a first-class entity in institutional systems such as GIS databases.National HEOs, therefore, hold large volumes of geospatial data that extend right across the nation they represent.Visualisation of these collections on web maps like 'Heritage for All' is relatively straightforward although alignment with authority files or gazetteers can be problematic.On the other hand, GLAMs' records pose more problems as they do not place the same emphasis on location.Locations connected to GLAMs' objects vary and include, to name just three examples, provenance, deposit and references in text content.Metadata held by GLAMs invariably contain toponyms.These placenames refer to geographical areas, are often imprecise and do not foster the aforementioned engagement possibilities at this local scale.Their visualisation, particularly in the historical context, is complex (Gregory & Hardie, 2011).Exceptions do exist for example, photographs, maps or sounds, particularly when born-digital, might contain coordinates in their metadata.A second approach is the extraction of geographical information from the digital content of GLAMs' objects.Text contains toponyms, addresses or postcodes and images depict locations.Their extraction and the subsequent derivation of geospatial data require expertise and labour.The distribution and quality of the results vary and determining which digital collections are suitable requires curatorial expertise.Despite these difficulties, focus-group participants responded very positively to the use of location to present GLAMs' collections.Moreover, the presentation of GLAMs' and HEOs' collections together on web maps offered valuable opportunities for co-contextualisation.

Concluding remarks
This article demonstrates that the geographical information embedded within collections can help the public to discover meaningful records by appealing to audiences' interconnected values and identities.Audience research explored the presentation of heritage at a 'local scale' and found relevance beyond the locations where people live.Rather, audiences are motivated by connections to a range of familiar and personally significant locations drawn from memory, genealogy and community, their 'own places'.A usercentred definition of significance can break down hierarchical definitions of heritage that are rooted in geographical concepts such as 'local' or 'national' (Giaccardi, 2010).The precision, extent, dispersion, and volume of the geospatial data derived from collections determine the potential to discover records connected to the public's 'own places' for audiences across a nation like the UK.The outlined audience research methodology was grounded in market research principles with an emphasis on maximising interest in collections.Impact in this context is restricted to web analytics or webpage 'hits'.Whilst the approach falls within the priorities of many CHOs, it could be criticised for treating heritage as a commodity.Furthermore, the two stimulus examples place the public in the role of passive consumers of digital collections and could be critiqued for propounding 'authorised heritage discourse' and casting organisations in a privileged role, homogenising heritage and potentially 'diminishing marginalised views' (See also Kennedy et al., 2016;Neal, 2015, p. 348).However, existing records form the bedrock of digital engagement initiatives by CHOs and the relationship between geographical information, identity and audience engagement is applicable beyond the consumer-focused model that the stimulus provides.For example, the article's conclusions could encourage active engagement through crowdsourcing or community-generated content.Moreover, opportunities that heritage offers for community-building have been a focus of interest in the early twenty-first century (Ciolfi et al., 2017;Graham et al., 2000, pp. 204-205;Timothy, 2014, p. 42).Geographical information could structure activities for community or visitor groups operating in-person or online.Yet it is beyond the scope of this article to describe pathways between the described approach to presenting collections, user motivations and 'impact' like improved social cohesion through shared identity or sense of belonging (Antonsich, 2010, p. 653;Tanner, 2012).Whether the consumer-focused model adopted in our stimulus alone can reshape communities is unclear.Nevertheless, audience research demonstrates that participants enjoy and are rewarded by discovering collections with connections to their 'own places'.Geographical information provides the building blocks of this approach, helping varied audiences to find significance in collections as the human geography of the UK is refashioned in a post-Covid world.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Audience survey responses to question S6: 'Roughly how often do you use the following online tools?' Seven response options condensed to five for the graph.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Audience survey responses to question B4: 'Which of the following do you use online map interfaces for?' Respondents could reply yes or no to any of 12 options.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Audience profiles for focus groups based on technological engagement and interest in heritage.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4.A Street Near You first slide shown to focus groups as discussion stimulus (Morley, 2018a).

Figure 5 .
Figure 5.A Street Near You second slide shown to focus groups (Morley, 2018a).

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Heritage for all pretotype slide shown to focus groups as discussion stimulus.