Background

The rapid development of information technologies and the Internet has enabled memory organizations, such as museums, archives and libraries, to provide access to their collections online and ubiquitously, and thus attract wider audiences than those that visit the physical museums. Various trends on the social web allow for users not only to be passive consumers, but also active participants. Additionally, personalization capitalizes on a user-centred intelligent interactive information exchange between websites or mobile guide systems and visitors. In this way the museum monologue turns into a dialogue, and personalization provides opportunities for a new communication strategy based on a continuous process of interaction, collaboration, learning and adaptation between the museum and its visitors.

Given these developments and trends, it is critical for memory institutions to know their visitors (users), and provide personalized interactive methods and systems for accessing their collections and services, both online and in physical space. Multimedia information systems (such as search engines, interactive tours and visualizations) are now positioned centrally in a shared information space consisting of (1) digitized artefacts (2) the social web (3) and links between them. Personalization in multimedia information systems can improve the experience of visitors by assisting them in finding appropriate starting points, and in discovering new relevant information.

Critically, these systems must become intelligent, so that they are able to adaptively act, react, respond and learn intelligently from user interactions. In order to improve access to and interaction with multimedia systems for a broad range of users, this workshop investigates three timely and interrelated issues relevant to the domains of both multimedia and cultural heritage:

• Grow existing knowledge with new knowledge: Explore methods and tools to capture knowledge resulting from interactions between users (collective intelligence), professionals and collection artifacts
• Extend contexts of use: Appropriation of digitized artifacts from memory organizations outside the traditional museum and research context for both visitors and professionals
• Expand modes of interaction: Develop meaningful services for end-users through new alliances, notably with the creative industry

PATCH Elsewhere: PATCH has been successfully organized three times before

• PATCH 2011 at the 2011 Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces
• PATCH 2008 at the 2008 Conference on Adaptive Hypermedia
• PATCH 2007 at the 2007 Conference on User Modeling