M. Düring, A. Jatowt, J. Preiser-Kapeller, A. van den Bosch (eds.): Proceedings of the 3rd HistoInformatics Workshop, Krakow, Poland, 11 July 2016, published at http://ceur-ws.org Reframing Cultural Heritage Collections in a Visualization Framework of Space-Time Cubes Florian Windhager 1* , Eva Mayr 1 , Günther Schreder 1 , Michael Smuc 1 , Paolo Federico 2 and Silvia Miksch 2 1 Danube University Krems, Krems, Austria florian.windhager@donau-uni.ac.at, eva.mayr@donau-uni.ac.at, guenther.schreder@donau-uni.ac.at, michael.smuc@donau-uni.ac.at, 2 University of Technology Vienna, Vienna, Austria federico@ifs.tuwien.ac.at, miksch@ifs.tuwien.ac.at Abstract During the last decades, digitization broadened access to cultural heritage collections for public audiences. Large online databases have been prepared for open access with simple search interfaces or visual exploration methods. In this position paper we discuss new challenges arising from these initiatives with regard to casual users. To meet their specific needs, we introduce a novel method for synoptic collection visualization which makes use of parallel space-time cubes to provide multiple spatiotemporal overviews, support free exploration, and to specifically engage casual audiences. 1 Introduction To facilitate sustainable access to our cultural achievements, cultural heritage collections provide windows into the past and store data on their objects in multiple dimensions. Curiously enough, it is the successful development of big cultural heritage databases like europeana.eu, which generates new challenges of (in)accessibility: Existing user interfaces require prior knowledge about what is to be found [3] and thus introduce a potential barrier for non-professional visitors or casual users, who just want to explore the collection, as we will discuss in chapter 2. Chapter 3 and 4 discuss how Information Visualization (InfoVis) interfaces can provide the means to address these issues - and how some of their limitations could be overcome by a novel interface design, making use of multiple space-time cube representations. As an outlook we discuss possible implementation scenarios in chapter 5. * Corresponding author