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.

Agenda

12:30 - 13:00 Registration & Lunch

13:00 – 13:15 Welcome, framing of the workshop, and short introductions of the programme committee

13:15 – 14:15 Paper session 1 - design frameworks and empirical studies (mix of long and short papers)

14:15 – 14:30 Coffee break

14:30 – 15:30 Paper session 2 - critical reflections and community/governance approaches (mix of long and short papers)

15:30 – 16:00 Closing panel: “Curator-AI collaboration as a research agenda for digital curation.” Panellists drawn from the accepted authors and the programme committee

More information

For more information please visit workshop website: https://sites.google.com/iscte-iul.pt/cair-2027/

Submission platform: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cair2027

This workshop is organised by Iscte - University Institute of Lisbon.