IDCC27 Workshop 4: Curators in the loop

Workshop 4: Curators in the loop: human-centred artificial intelligence for the digital curation of cultural heritage collections

Workshop Description:

Digital curation of cultural heritage collections is increasingly mediated by AI: metadata is generated by models, texts transcribed by handwriting recognition, entities linked automatically, descriptions drafted by large language models. Each step reshapes the curator’s role — often silently, and rarely by design.

Topic:

The prevailing framing of “human-in-the-loop” collapses to the curator as reviewer of model output, understating the interpretive labour, disciplinary craft, and community accountability that curation practice carries. Responding to the IDCC27 theme, “FAIR DO’s: Centring People in the Stewardship and Curation of Digital Objects,” this workshop convenes work that pushes past oversight toward a richer account of curator-AI collaboration — as a design problem, an empirical research problem, and a governance problem.

We invite contributions across four areas:

(i) design frameworks and interaction patterns for curator-facing AI systems;

(ii) empirical studies of curator experience with AI-augmented workflows;

(iii) methodological and critical reflections on curator agency, expertise, and craft;

(iv) community, participatory, and governance approaches to AI in cultural heritage. Contributions from early-career researchers, practitioners, and community-based scholars are explicitly encouraged.

Objectives:

To bring together researchers and practitioners across AI, HCI, digital humanities, and cultural heritage; consolidate an initial map of design patterns, evaluation methods, and open questions for curator-centred AI; and seed a community of practice with a shared post-workshop report and future position paper (e.g., for the International Council on Archives).

Target audience:

AI/ML, HCI, and digital humanities researchers; digital curators, archivists, librarians, and museum informatics practitioners deploying AI; ethics and governance scholars; and community-representative researchers. Anticipated attendance: 25–40 participants.