Keynote 'Evolutionary Innovations: Collections as Data in the AI era' for Making Meaning 2024

My slides for #SLQMakingMeaning #CollectionsAsData, 'Evolutionary Innovations: Collections as Data in the AI era', are online at https://zenodo.org/records/10795641

‘Collections as data’ describes the movement to publish open data from museum, library and archive collections that began in the noughties. The benefits of machine learning for better discoverability and research with digitised/born digital collections are alluring. And the popularity of generative AI – and an increased awareness of the biases it reinscribes – has focused attention on responsible computational access to collections – but what does this mean in practical terms? Mia will share examples from the British Library and the Living with Machines data science project.

'Enriching lives: connecting communities and culture with the help of machines': my EuropeanaTech 2023 keynote

Panorama lit by natural light of a seaside town
The video for my opening keynote on 'Enriching lives: connecting communities and culture with the help of machines' for the EuropeanaTech 2023 conference is now online.

The EuropeanaTech 2023 conference was held in The Hague, the Netherlands and online from 10 – 12 October 2023. My slides are online.

My abstract: I’ll begin with an overview of current developments in AI and machine learning, then present work with crowdsourcing from the Living with Machines project to think about what AI means for online volunteers and communities around digital cultural heritage. I’ll share new thinking on ‘volunteer enrichment’ – participation in crowdsourcing that not only enriches and enhances collections records, but also enriches the lives of volunteers. How can we embed GLAM values when we apply AI and machine learning tools in our work?

In preparing my keynote I revisited my keynote for EuropeanaTech 2011, and reflected on work on crowdsourcing, data science and AI at the British Library, the Collective Wisdom project and Living with Machines since then.

2022: an overview(ish)

A work-in-progress post about what I got up to last year.

The biggest thing I did in 2022 was co-curate an exhibition at Leeds City Museum for the British Library and Living with Machines project.

November: I was invited to the Archives nationales de France conference 'Crowdsourcing et patrimoine culturel écrit', where I spoke on Crowdsourcing as connection: a constant star over a sea of change / Établir des connexions : un invariant des projets de crowdsourcing par Mia Ridge, British Library, Royaume-Uni

In December I gave an online keynote on 'Citizen Science as Public History?' for the conference 'When publics co-produce history in museums: skills, methodologies and impact of participation' at The Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), University of Luxembourg.

2019: an overview(ish)

A very incomplete page…

Projects: Living with Machines

  • Continued recruiting the project team
  • Set up the project website (graphic identity and WordPress template by an agency, working with the project team)
  • Helped devise the Communications strategy

Publications

Ridge, M. (forthcoming). Crowdsourcing in cultural heritage: A practical guide to designing and running successful projects. In K. Schuster & S. Dunn (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Digital Humanities. Routledge.

Talks and teaching

June: I was at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis to teach Collections as Data with Thomas Padilla for the HILT digital humanities summer school.

An invited talk on 'Voyages of discovery with digital collections' for the Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, June 2019

Blog posts

Other

Peer reviewer, Digital Humanities 2019

2017: an overview

This page is a work in progress…

2017 was an unexpectedly challenging year, as much of it was taken up with treatment for cancer. (I'm fine now).

In February 2017 I did a workshop in Edinburgh for Dr Anouk Lang's Beyond the Black Box: Building Algorithmic and Statistical Literacy through Digital Humanities Tools and Resources and in Santa Barbara for Always Already Computational: Library Collections as Data. I keynoted at DIGIKULT 2017 in Sweden in March, and in June I was in Sydney for the Future Library Congress at EduTECH. I was in Taiwan in August and in October I spoke at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC and gave a keynote on crowdsourcing in Angers, France.