Fourth AIUCD annual conference 17-19 December 2015

Digital humanities and cultural heritage: what relationship?

The AIUCD 2015 conference is dedicated to investigate the relationship
between the Digital Humanities and the broad field of Cultural Heritage,
a line of research that is open since the inception of the former.
On the one hand, the Cultural Heritage domain has been using digital
tools, processes and methodologies for quite a long time, but their use
does not imply a recognition of their role as scientifically qualifying.
On the other hand, galleries, libraries, archives and museums preserve
and provide access to a wealth of content that is the object of much
research carried out as part of the Digital Humanities.
It is therefore interesting to see if Digital Humanities tools and
methods have led and will lead to a redefinition of theoretical,
methodological and technical processes, up to an actual
re-conceptualization of knowledge in the Cultural Heritage field.

At least two issues indicate the existence of a connection: the
theoretical reflection on the management of information and data that
texts hold, which has been carried out as part of the management of
libraries, has important consequences for the whole wide area of the
Digital Humanities; in the context of research funding, the increasing
demand to describe what will be the public impact of planned research
identifies in a “relationship with society” topic a significant element
wide spread in the Cultural Heritage area. Furthermore, if on the one
hand the world of Cultural Heritage has started their own reflection
that also touches the Digital Humanities, on the other hand the Digital
Humanities are urged to communicate beyond the inner, often
self-referential,  circle of Academia, and to do this they are inspired
by the methods of communication and dissemination of knowledge that
belong to the Cultural Heritage world. In conclusion, a meeting of
Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage is already under way, it is
necessary to act and facilitate a cooperation that results in being as
effective as possible for both fields.

As a sign of openness and willingness to cooperate with the Cultural
Heritage world, conference organization is entrusted to the Centro di
Ricerca Interdipartimentale per la digitalizzazione e la realizzazione
di Biblioteche Digitali Umanistiche - MEDIHUM Memoria Digitalis
Humanistica (Università di Torino).


We are therefore soliciting papers in particular on – but not limited to
- the following topics:

- Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage: integration, separation,
independence?
- what relationship among Museums, Libraries, Archives and Digital
Humanities?
- how do Digital Humanities fit in Museums, Archives and Galleries?
visualization, imaging, graphic representations, immersive environments
in the Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage areas;
- which impact on society for research projects’ output in  the Digital
Humanities and Cultural Heritage areas?
- Public History: Museums, Libraries and Archives today are privileged
mediators between the public and its past, DH methodologies however
require new figures, aware of the issues and opportunities offered by
the digital world;
- which forms may the collaboration between cultural institutions and
digital humanists take in digitization projects, text encoding, critical
edition, digital curation?
- experiences of projects using principles and methods of the semantic
web, and Linked Open Data research.

The contributions, to be submitted as a 500 words maximum abstract in
PDF format, must be loaded through the EasyChair platform at the URL:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aiucd2015.

The deadline for submission of abstracts to the Programme Committee is
scheduled for midnight of August 31st, 2015. All abstracts will be
subject to evaluation by the AIUCD conference Programme Committee.
Information with regard to the acceptance of abstracts will be
communicated to the authors by 30th September 2015.

Further information on the conference, on the composition of the
Programme Committee and on how to register will be made available on the
conference web site at the URL:

http://www.aiucd2015.unito.it/

(the website may not be online yet at the moment of publishing this
announcement).