HistOracle: Consolidation and Dissemination of Heritage Information

Combining heritage with technology in a way which is both engaging and educational is an ongoing challenge. The HistOracle project attempts to address this issue by combining historical research with multiple methods of output, which all source information from one database. This paper provides an overview of the project and how its aims of consolidating and subsequently disseminating Norwich's heritage are being met by historians and computer scientists. Issues discussed include the construction of a database capable of containing a wide variety of researched material, a website which processes the data for output and a gesture-controlled interactive system which displays a specified subset of the data. Also presented is an evaluation of the interactive system's effectiveness in its proposed role as part of a public exhibition.