Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to the international conference **Collect & Connect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age**. The conference will be held online from 23 to 24 November 2020. The full program can be found here: http://program.makingsenseproject.org. Owing to an additional grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), registering for and participating in the conference is without cost, however the virtual seats we can offer are limited. See for detailed registration instructions here: http://register.makingsenseproject.org

Keynote lectures:

Sharon Leon, Michigan State University: From Event to Data Set: Perspective, Structure, and the Problem of Representation in Data-Driven Digital History

Franco Niccolucci, PIN-University of Florence: The data challenge for cultural and natural heritage

Lambert Schomaker, University of Groningen: From pixels to knowledge using AI: Where do the humans fit in?

Round table:

Semantics and Beyond: Modeling and enriching longue-durée biocultural data for answering interdisciplinary and epistemic research questions

Panel convenor: Martha Fleming (Natural History Museum of Denmark)

Panel chairs: Dominik Hünniger (Hamburg University) and Katy Wolstencroft (Leiden University)

Panelists: Sally Chambers (Ghent University), Isabelle Charmantier (Linnean Society), Tahani Nadim (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin & Humboldt-University), Nicky Nicolson (Royal Botanical Gardens Kew), Neil Safier (John Carter Brown Library & Brown University)

The full program, including all paper presentations and Demolab presentations can be found here: http://program.makingsenseproject.org

Scope of the conference: 

In recent years, libraries, archives and museums have spent major efforts on annotating and enriching their digitized archives and collections with contextual information, in order to make them retrievable and interlinked in novel ways. Often institutions aim to enhance their reach and relevance for broader user groups. A major challenge in the field is the heterogeneous character of many of such digitized collections. Many handwritten archives and collections of physical objects in the realms of natural history, archaeology, history, and art history entail combinations of textual and visual elements whose interpretation requires a range of different expertise and computational technologies. This conference therefore welcomes papers that present, discuss, and reflect upon the technical, social, and institutional challenges digital heritage professionals and researchers encounter when enriching heterogeneous digitized collections with context.

We look forward to welcoming you on 23th of November!

Kind regards,

Andreas Weber

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Dr. Andreas Weber, University of Twente | https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/steps/staff/weber/

Assistant professor | Research group: Science, Technology and Policy Studies (STePS)

PhD training coordinator | Graduate Research School of Science, Technology, and Modern Culture (WTMC)

International Conference: Collect&Connect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age – program!

ICAART Special session on AI & Digital Cultural Heritage (ARTIDIGH 2021) – submit a paper!

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Semantic web approaches to interlinking digitized historical archives and collections
• Text and image interpretation in digital collections
• Multimodal collection interpretation and access
• Handwriting recognition and heterogeneous digital collections
• Machine learning and digital collections
• Bias and digital heritage
• Computer vision and digital collections
• Digital collections' access and inclusivity
• Sharing and visualization of heterogeneous historical archives and collections
• Citizen science (including crowdsourcing) and digital archives and collections
• Challenges of enriching digitized handwritten archive material
• Digital capture and annotation of heterogeneous collections and artefacts
• Dealing with uncertainty, quality issues, data bias and collection gaps
• Geographical and spatial enrichment of collections
• Application of common vocabularies and data reconciliation

If you are not sure whether you research fits with ** Collect & Connect ** or if you have any other question relate to the event, please do not hesitate to contact the conference chairs:

1. Andreas Weber (a.weber@utwente.nl)

2. Eulàlia Gassó Miracle (eulalia.gassomiracle@naturalis.nl)
3. Katy Wolstencroft (k.j.wolstencroft@liacs.leidenuniv.nl)

4. Maarten Heerlien (m.heerlien@rijksmuseum.nl)