UNESCO has long called for the preservation of born-digital cultural heritage (UNESCO 2003) while emerging research recognizes the distinctive challenges of this endeavor, highlighting the need for new frameworks to assess and perpetuate it (see e.g. Ross/ Gow 1999, Ries/Palkó, 2019). However, current practices often focus on technical preservation and overlook public access, user engagement, and participatory selection processes — aspects crucial for heritage’s social relevance (see Jaillant 2022). The research project Digital Cultural Heritage of Our Time (DiCHOT), conducted by the German National Library (PI: PD Dr. Dr. habil. Frédéric Döhl) and the University of Oldenburg (PI: Prof. Dr. Mario Dunkel) from 2025 to 20230, addresses this gap by developing sustainable infrastructures of engagement that connect memory institutions, academia, and young audiences.

Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, DiCHOT interlinks concrete practices of digital preservation with educational and participatory formats. The project contributes both theoretically and practically to current debates on born-digital cultural heritage and its archiving at the German National Library. Building on this foundation, DiCHOT develops a digital teaching unit with explicitly contemporary content for secondary education. Feedback from students is systematically incorporated into the identification and selection of culturally relevant materials. In this way, the project establishes a circular model in which archival practice, research, and public engagement mutually inform one another.

As a case study, DiCHOT focuses on auditory, visual, textual, and audiovisual user-generated content (UGC) produced within music-related digital cultures as forms of political participation and opinion expression on social media platforms. Various UGC formats—such as mashups, memes, and fan art—are analyzed using a combination of qualitative methods and computational approaches (presumably stylometry and topic modelling). While the concept of (digital) communities of practice (Wenger 2008) is an important theoretical anchor, the exploratory character of the project will also allow for a data-driven (inductive) development of new models (e.g. differentiating UGC by genre, style or other parameters).

The paper will present DiCHOT as a pilot project for building new connections between academia, memory institutions, and adolescent publics. In addition, it discusses first research results. By the time of the conference, an initial “topology” of musical UGC will have been developed. This topology synthesizes existing scholarship with original empirical findings and serves both as a framework for archival decision-making and as a first step towards a model of selecting born-digital cultural heritage according to thematic, social, and media-related criteria, guided by the principle of “exemplary diversity” (Arndt/Woldering 2025).

In a broader context, the approach of the DiCHOT project suggests how engaged research can foster sustainable infrastructures of participation, strengthen democratic discourse among young people, and advance the societal mission of cultural heritage institutions.