The deadline is approaching for submissions of papers to the 3rd International Workshop on Personalized Access to Cultural Heritage, which will be held in conjunction with the IUI2011 Conference (2011 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces) in Palo Alto, Cal., February 13-16, 2011.

The deadline is November 12, 2010, and accepted authors will be informed by December 12, 2010.

The name of the workshop reveals much of what you’d need to know about its coverage. As the organizers say, rapid development of information technologies and the Internet is making it easier and easier for individuals to gain access to collections at cultural-heritage and public organizations. Visiting a collection can mean going to a physical location, or just dialing it up.

Additionally, the organizers note, trends on Web 2.0 allow users to become active participants in collection development – in interaction, collaboration, learning, and adaptation between museums and their visitors.

The workshop, which is designed for researchers, practitioners, and students of information and communications technologies and cultural-heritage institutions such as museums, archives, and libraries, and is likely to attract about 35 participants, will focus on challenges in that process, from the points of view of user interaction and visitor experience. It will investigate how to improve contact points between visitors and systems.

Conference topics include user interaction with museum collections, digital multimedia archives, and tourist information services; use of avatars and other personalized interfaces for single users; navigation and browsing interfaces; and interaction devices in museums and other cultural-heritage institutions.

Submission details are available online.

Organizers of the conference include Lora Aroyo, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Fabian Bohnert, Monash University, Australia; Tsvi Kuflik, The University of Haifa, Israell and Johan Oomen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, The Netherlands.