Živa Zupan, Ljudmila

The problem with Slovenian culture on the internet is not the lack, but rather the atomisation, of online content, its structural deficiencies and how difficult it is to access. Since the more popular internet search engines (Google, etc.) cannot search databases through forms, there is a significant amount of data stored in specialised databases that cannot be reached in this way.

At the Društvo Ljudmila association we have been developing an online tool, the Kulturnik portal, which enables access to e-content on Slovenian culture from a single location and provides:

• better accessibility to Slovenian culture in the online information space;
• a faster and easier way to search for cultural content;
• more relevant hits than Google or Najdi.si.

Kulturnik includes a metasearch engine and two aggregators, one for current affairs and one for events that are collected from various Slovenian digital sources and databases related to art and culture. We already have over 1,000 sources!

We will present the ways in which Kulturnik can be used, its content and how it works.

Živa Zupan has been working closely with Društvo Ljudmila in the field of planning, designing and optimising webpages since 1996, focusing particularly on the user and editorial experience. She has also been coordinating various projects, an example of which would be Mobilatorij – a high-tech mobile container designed for improving digital literacy.

From 2004 to 2010, she worked with the France Prešeren Trnovo Cultural Art Society, which gave her a detailed insight into the functioning of the Slovenian cultural scene, particularly its financial and project aspects.

In 2010, she returned to Društvo Ljudmila. Owing to her experience in the field of administration and project management, she became the secretary of the Društvo Ljudmila association and coordinator of cultural projects involving information activities in the field of international collaboration and cultural development – Culture.si and Kulturnik.si. All along, her main interest has been to develop a user-friendly internet.