The Use of the Usability Scale System as an Evaluation of the Kampung Heritage Kajoetangan Guide Ebook Application

The development of information technology these days allows tourists to get information about tourist destinations very easily. One of the ways to get information about tourist destinations is from a guidebook. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the Kampung Heritage Kajoetangan's e-book application using the System Usability Scale method. The data was collected using a questionnaire. The respondents of this study are 40 people. The results show that the respondents considered the Kajoetangan travel guide e-book is already good and acceptable. However, looking at the NPS, the respondents tend to behave as promoters. Therefore, it is necessary to provide education and introduction of the application to the users (e.g. tour guides and the public). Thus, the problem of the lack of experience in trying the Kajoetangan travel guide e-book can be solved. In addition, developers, in this case, the researchers, must also improve the application, particularly regarding the complexity of the application so the public and tour guides, as the target users, can easily use it.

Moscow Travel Guide for Voltaire

The manuscript “Description of the city of Moscow” from the Voltaire Library has been subjected to special study for the first time. In this essay, the ancient Russian capital is presented as a vast and crowded city, the distinctive feature of which is the abundance of churches and monasteries. The description of the city is conducted according to the historically formed parts: the Kremlin, Kitay-gorod, White City, Earthen City. The description is based on the “Plan of the Imperial city of Moscow” by I. Michurin (1739). The most likely the author of this kind of guidebooks is I. C. Taubert.

The naturalisation of nineteenth-century German Railways as depicted in visual discourse

Despite the dramatic effect of the railway age on the natural surroundings, it was not seen necessarily as destructive to nature. Railways were both the epitome of progress as well as integral features in pastoral landscapes. This seemingly paradoxical perception of railways is partially explained by historicising the “naturalisation” of the German train system. This article describes the rapid transformation of the German train from a symbol of dynamic industrialisation to an integral part of the landscape. Visual images, such as lithographs and postcards, were the catalysts in this process. Railway companies, local elites and travel guide publishers promoted the process of “naturalisation” for economic reasons, but the iconography was a result of visual discourse in nineteenth-century German culture. This paper shows that unlike American, British and French depictions of railways, German artists portrayed a railway system, which rather than conquering nature, was blending peacefully into an existing natural landscape.

De Nederlandse navolging van een Duitse reisgidsenreeks, Was nicht im Baedeker steht : Alternatieve verkenningen van Amsterdam, Rotterdam en Den Haag in Wat niet in Baedeker staat

The travel guide series Was nicht im Baedeker steht, published during the interwar period, can be qualified as anti-tourist. The main feature of this critical attitude towards the established Baedekers, which promoted a bourgeois way of travelling, is irony. Zielverfehlung, a deliberate contrariness of what conventional travel guides recommended as the highlights of a journey, is a recurrent theme in the Was nicht im Baedeker steht travel guides. When applied to these guides, Sabine Boomers’ research on nomadic travelling (2004) led us to distinguish four anti-tourist topics: the natural, the futile, the unmentionable and the odd versus the familiar. These topics can also be found in the Dutch imitations of the German series, published as three volumes entitled Wat niet in Baedeker staat. These Dutch guides discuss Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. The transport of the German anti-tourist concept to the Dutch book-market entailed a transformation that somewhat spoiled the rebellious character of the German travel guides. To fit into the Dutch literary system, a revived version of the early nineteenth-century genre of the ‘physiology’ was adopted by the travel guides of the series Wat niet in Baedeker staat.SamenvattingDe serie reisgidsen die gedurende het Interbellum werd gepubliceerd met de titel Was nicht im Baedeker steht kan antitoeristisch genoemd worden. Het belangrijkste kenmerk van de kritische houding tegenover de alom bekende Baedekers, die een burgerlijke manier van reizen aanbevalen, is ironie. Zielverfehlung, reizen zonder bestemming, een opzettelijke ontkenning van wat in de conventionele reisgidsen werd aangeprezen als de hoogtepunten van een reis, is een terugkerend motief in de reisgidsjes uit de reeks Was nicht im Baedeker steht. Als we Sabine Boomers’ onderzoek naar het nomadische reizen (2004) toepassen op deze gidsen, kunnen we vier antitoeristische thema’s herkennen: het natuurlijke, het onaanzienlijke, het onbespreekbare en de verwevenheid van het vreemde en het vertrouwde. Deze thema’s kunnen ook worden aangetroffen in de Nederlandse navolgingen van de Duitse boekjes, drie delen die verschenen in de reeks Wat niet in Baedeker staat. Het zijn reisgidsjes van Amsterdam, Rotterdam en Den Haag. Het transport van het Duitse antitoeristische concept naar de Nederlandse boekenmarkt zorgde voor een transformatie die afbreuk deed aan het tegendraadse karakter van de Duitse reisgidsen. Om een plaats te verwerven in het Nederlandse literaire systeem grepen de reisgidsen uit de reeks Wat niet in Baedeker staat terug op het vroeg-negentiende-eeuwse genre van de fysiologieën.

Virtual-Physical Space "Bulgarian Cultural and Historical Heritage"

The article presents a virtual physical space for storage and presentation of digitized Bulgarian cultural, historical and similar sites. The space is realized with the help of integrated technology, including means of artificial intelligence, enhanced with modern technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things) and CPSS (Cyber-Physical-Social System). The advantages of space compared to the usual approaches for developing this type of systems are discussed. The objects digitized in accordance with the CCO standard (Cataloging Cultural Objects) are stored in a distributed knowledge base, implemented mainly as ontologies. The space provides users with a personal travel guide who is able to understand and fulfill their wishes and preferences. Keywords: Virtual-Physical Space (ViPS); Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO)

“I'm Looking Outside the Window When the Mountains Begin”: the Genre of the Book “A Trip to the Urals” by Elizabeth Polonskaya

The article examines the genre originality of the book “A Trip to the Urals” by E. G. Polonskaya, written as a result of the writer’s business trip to Sverdlovsk and the Ural Region, while working as a reporter for Leningradskaya Pravda in 1926. “A trip to the Urals”, which first came into the focus of close research attention, is perceived a journalistic text created in the era of Soviet construction, reconstruction of factories and cities. EG Polonskaya succeeds in capturing not just the restoration of production after the Civil War, but proceeding to fixing “our achievements”; the scale of her vision in many ways anticipated a new era — industrialization. The article concludes that in terms of genre, the book continued the traditions of travel literature and became the Soviet version of the travel guide, consisting of a compilation of travel notes, a feuilleton and production essays.