Conference Agenda (All times are shown in Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) unless otherwise noted)

While searching within digital humanities collections is an important aspect of digital humanities research, the search features provided are usually more suited to lookup search than exploratory search. This limits the ability of digital humanities scholars to undertake complex search scenarios. Drawing upon recent studies on supporting exploratory search in academic digital libraries, we implemented two visual keyword/result linking approaches for searching within the Europeana collection; one that keeps the keywords linked to the search results and another that aggregates the keywords over the search result set. Using a controlled laboratory study, we assessed these approaches in comparison to the existing Europeana search mechanisms. We found that both visual keyword/result linking approaches were improvements over the baseline, with some differences between the new approaches that were dependent on the stage of the exploratory search process. This work illustrates the value of providing advanced search functionality within digital humanities collections to support exploratory search processes, and the need for further design and study of digital humanities search tools that support complex search scenarios.

Prompted by recent innovations, artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being discussed across the museum sector regarding its implications for institutional roles and practices. However, AI in particular, is an ambiguous term, a ‘black box’ which is capable of containing and reflecting numerous values and ideals (Crawford, 2021). This paper positions discourse around AI as a ‘discursive’ infrastructure, capable of not only embodying ideals but also shaping and justifying certain institutional practices and roles. This paper thematically analyses 115 pieces of grey literature produced and shared by professional governance bodies in the museum sector from 1995-2023, mainly across Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In doing so, it identifies four preliminary themes encompassing shifts in discourse over time which give shape to a contemporary discursive infrastructure. This prompts timely critical reflections of museum professionals and stakeholders on both imagined and overlooked public roles, responsibilities, and practices of the museum in relation to AI.

Digital video collections of dance, theatre, and other performances can provide unprecedented access to these ephemeral art forms. Making these collections searchable requires understanding of users’ needs, necessitating collaboration among subject matter, metadata, and information behavior experts. Focusing on the example of Circus Oz, a prominent Australian circus company, this paper describes an exploratory, user-centered process that draws on qualitative thematic coding techniques to create descriptive metadata schema. This iterative process illustrates the extensive labor involved, and the combination of expertise required, to create schema that extend beyond technical and basic categories to support rich search and discovery of cultural data collections.

In the past two decades, the digitization of humanities resources has rapidly expanded, giving rise to the field of Digital Humanities (DH). This evolution has fostered a growing need for effective interoperability—the ability to access and integrate data across diverse digital collections, tools, and platforms. Despite significant technological advancements aimed at facilitating interoperability, challenges persist. These challenges are not only technical but are also influenced by sociocultural factors, which include organizational and cultural elements. This paper aims to bridge the gap in the literature concerning these sociotechnical factors affecting interoperability within DH projects and collections.

This paper presents the analysis of the real-world experiences of DH researchers attempting to connect material from different sources. Each participant described a specific incident where combining software or content was particularly problematic. This data was analyzed via thematic analysis. The findings reveal a complex landscape of interoperability challenges, underpinned by a range of sociotechnical factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, discrepancies in metadata standards, differences in organizational cultures, and varying levels of technical expertise among practitioners. By highlighting these factors, the paper contributes valuable insights into the multifaceted nature of interoperability issues in DH, offering evidence-based plans to address these challenges.