Abstract

EUROSTAT's website dedicates a new section to experimental statistics. They report the adoption of new data sources and methods in an effort to expand and improve the way official statistics responds to their users' needs. The initial release, dated June 2017, includes three products, compiled from new data sources and methods: one is about Food price monitoring, the second about Labour market transitions, and the third about World Heritage Sites. Statistics on UNESCO World Heritage Sites result from a Big Data project using Wikipedia as a source, with Wikipedia articles associated to each site and the total number of page views taken as a measure of popularity of the sites or a measure of «cultural consumption» of world heritage. The experiment is particularly interesting in the light of scarcity of first-hand data collections in the cultural domain at the EU level. In this article, the characteristics of the experimental cultural statistics are briefly considered, as well as its possible future developments.