This is a growing list with related tools, digital case studies, and research projects.
More will be added, as well as a bibliography with resources that address the topic from various perspectives – please check back!
If you want to add something to the list, please get in touch.
TOOLS
Combatting Bias:
“Combatting Bias is an initiative that has created a ‘bias-aware framework‘ to support researchers in identifying, describing, and reducing harmful biases in their data. Rather than pursuing the impossible goal of complete bias elimination, this project provides guidelines for researchers to understand and transparently document biases. While predominantly focused on historical data, the framework provides a broad scope for any researcher or user to think about issues of bias in their work.”
combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl
De-Bias:
The project is about “detecting and cur(at)ing harmful language in cultural heritage collections”. It developed two practical resources:
the vocabulary covers “700 words across five languages, supports professionals to review descriptions of cultural heritage collections with regards to potential bias”;
the tool “detects outdated and potentially harmful language in descriptions of cultural heritage collections.”
The project: pro.europeana.eu/project/de-bias
The vocabulary: pro.europeana.eu/page/the-de-bias-vocabulary
The tool: pro.europeana.eu/page/the-de-bias-tool
Data Envelopes:
“The proposed data-envelopes provide the opportunity to achieve a balance in dataset descriptions where important cultural information can be described in detail across different types of facets by researchers and other dataset creators.
For example, the data-envelopes also incorporate information about provenance (in what context the sources originated), context around FAIR principles (e.g., where can the data be found and in what format; what does someone need to know before they (re)use the dataset), and positionality (who worked on it and what does that potentially say about bias and blind spots). In addition, the data-envelopes add facets that are actually machine-readable and therefore enhance interoperability with other systems and discoverability.”
The project: huygens.knaw.nl/accessing-context-data-envelopes
The How-to: github.com/data-envelopes
Colonial Collections Datahub:
“[D]igital platform that brings together, enriches and provides insights into information on collections from colonial contexts. It includes heritage from Suriname, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and many other countries and areas. The datahub provides communities and researchers space to add perspectives on the included data.”
The context: www.colonialcollections.nl/en
The datahub: app.colonialcollections.nl/en
The dataset browser: datasets.colonialcollections.nl/en
Local Contexts:
“Local Contexts is focused on increasing Indigenous involvement in data governance through the integration of Indigenous values into data systems. […] In an increasingly complex legal, social, and cultural environment, the Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Biocultural (BC) Labels offer Indigenous communities a tool to add cultural and historical context and cultural authority to cultural heritage content in their own local digital heritage archives as well as in digital archives, libraries, museums and other digital repositories globally.”
The project: localcontexts.org
Traditional Knowledge Labels: localcontexts.org/labels/traditional-knowledge-labels
Biocultural Labels: localcontexts.org/labels/biocultural-labels
Mukurtu:
“The free, mobile, and open source platform built with Indigenous communities to manage and share digital cultural heritage. Mukurtu (MOOK-oo-too) is a grassroots project aiming to empower communities to manage, share, and exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways. We are committed to maintaining an open, community-driven approach to Mukurtu’s continued development. Our first priority is to help build a platform that fosters relationships of respect and trust.”
mukurtu.org
Noongarpedia:
“Noongarpedia is a collaborative project to add Noongar language content to Wikimedia projects and to improve all languages’ content relating to Noongar topics.”
meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Noongarpedia
Reciprocal Research Network:
“The RRN is an online tool to facilitate reciprocal and collaborative research about cultural heritage from the Northwest Coast of British Columbia. The RRN enables communities, cultural institutions and researchers to work together.”
www.rrncommunity.org
Global Indigenous Data Alliance:
“The Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA) is a network of Indigenous researchers, data practitioners, and policy activists advocating for Indigenous Data Sovereignty within their nation-states and at an international level. GIDA welcomes the participation of Indigenous data users, networks, community groups, information and communications technologies providers, researchers, policymakers, planners and businesses that share our aim. The aim of the Global Indigenous Data Alliance is to progress International Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Indigenous Data Governance in order to advance Indigenous control of Indigenous Data.”
www.gida-global.org
DIGITAL CASE STUDIES
In the Same Boats:
“The platform comprises two interactive visualizations that trace the movements of significant cultural actors from the Caribbean and wider Americas, Africa, and Europe within the 20th century Afro-Atlantic world.”
sameboats.org
Enslaved:
“Enslaved.org is a discovery hub that centers the lives of named enslaved and free[d] individuals who are made searchable and discoverable through a large and growing number of datasets and digital projects. Researchers can learn from linking data, visualizing larger relations and movements, and connecting the fragments of information about people’s lives from one dataset to the next.”
enslaved.org
Feral Atlas:
“Feral Atlas invites you to explore the ecological worlds created when nonhuman entities become tangled up with human infrastructure projects. […] Stretching conventional notions of maps and mapping, it draws on the relational potential of the digital to offer new ways of analyzing—and apprehending—the Anthropocene.”
feralatlas.org
Thinking With Moss:
“Thinking with Moss invites you to explore new models for how we think, design and develop digital collections and archives that speak to the invisible or under attended histories of the natural sciences. […] This site presents a transdisciplinary, transmodal collection of texts and creative works from respondents and prompts, questions, observations and insights […].”
www.thinkingwithmoss.net
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Accessing Context:
“We are working on a standard for the sustainable disclosure of cultural heritage data sets, whereby we address the specificity of this type of data. Bias, positionality, provenance and historical context play an important role in this.”
huygens.knaw.nl/accessing-context/
Digitizing Hatred:
“Examining and Enhancing Understanding of Digital Collections on the history of the Second Ku Klux Klan and its Opponents.”
gtr.ukri.org/projects/digitzed.hatred
The context: https://about.jstor.org/revealdigital/
WikiProject The Restitution of Knowledge – A Repertory of Colonial Plunder:
“This Wikidata project aims at mapping knowledge generated by two research projects on the history of colonial violence and the plunder of African cultural heritage. By creating new properties, engaging with existing data models and encoding historical information in Wikidata, it wishes to make information on colonial loot more accessible worldwide. By adding information on anti-colonial movements and leaders, the project also attempts to challenge Eurocentric perspectives on colonial history and museum collections.”
wikidata.org/TheRoK