MCN 2024

One of the challenges that digital technologies have made manifest in cultural heritage organizations is that there is more stuff than most staff have the time, attention or ability to devote to. In the past, before networked computers and compendiums of information like Wikipedia (or Amazon) changed people's expectations of what can and should be taken for granted, the cultural heritage sector dealt with this problem by hiding it in a flurry of words and never letting anyone see all the things stacked on shelves in the backroom. But people's expectations have changed and coupled with the calls for open access around our collections suddenly all that stuff, much of it uncataloged and unresearched, is seeing the light of day without much context. This session will discuss the organization and technical challenges that these new realities present emphasizing the questions surrounding the use of generative and artificial intelligence systems to address the cultural heritage sector's perennial "content deficit" and what many of the concerns about their use say about the sector itself.