Developing and Evaluating Management Services for Collective Memory ‡

Abstract

Collective memory is vital for people as it gives them the sense of belonging to a community. In particular, refugee population groups feel the need to maintain contact with their routes through collective memory, due to the abolishment of the physical connection to their homeland. However, people’s memories fade over time and stories are lost. In such a context a crucial question arises: Is it feasible to design and create a crowdsourcing collective memory management system for the benefit of such social groups preserving memory for next generations? In this work, we present a system that is able to collect and manage refugee stories disseminating them to the public. In order to stress the strength of the proposed system, we have created an evaluation methodology that assesses such a system in terms of system services and system stakeholders’ real impact. We chose to deal with the collective memory of refugee groups coming from Asia Minor to Greece at the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century. Evaluation results reveal that such a system positively affects personal and social impact factors. Furthermore, a preliminary results analysis suggests specific interactions among the examined personal and social impact factors. We believe that the proposed system facilitates the needs of collective memory management and the assessment scheme could be adapted in the creation and evaluation of collective memory management systems.