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This thesis is about the participatory production of cultural heritage and its regulation by institutional information structures in digital settings. The thesis combines perspectives from the scholarly fields of information studies, cultural heritage studies and cultural memory studies. The prerequisites for formation of more inclusive cultural heritage collections through digital participation is investigated by studies of how institutional information structures dictates conditions for heritagisation of information both as thing and as process. By profiling institutional creation of cultural heritage collections as a special mode of heritage production, the thesis advance the understanding of the conditions for digital participation as a method for heritage creation and negotiation in institutional information environments.

The institutional heritage production is theorised based on the concepts of infrastructuring, heritagisation, rhetoric agency of knowledge organisation systems, and an understanding of cultural heritage as building on dynamic passages between memory and forgetting. 

The thesis comprises four articles. The first investigates cases of exclusion of participatory created image-metadata in information systems. The second is about participatory infrastructuring in an archival transcription project. The third article studies how participants position contemporary photographs as heritage in relation to an institutional collection. The fourth article questions the problematisation of participatory influence with the aim to challenge the idea of participation being perceived of as a threat to preservation in memory institutions. 

The thesis found that the possibilities to create inclusive heritage collections with digital participation are limited, partly because of limitations in information structures within which the participation takes place. To facilitate diversification, institutions need to implement flexible information structures that provide support for user-generated information. This might require institutions to re-evaluate their approach to preservation and open up for flexible strategies which recognise constructive forgetting and negotiation of heritage as part of their responsibility and day-to-day work with heritage collections. One of the biggest challenges for institutions is therefore how to tune in to such a dynamic approach to heritage and how to prepare for participatorily generated suggestions and additions, while at the same time, keeping up with caring for integrity and preservation of heritage and heritage metadata.