Join us for our upcoming hybrid talk with Ben Lee as the first of UMD's Center for Archival Futures (CAFe) Spring series!
February 4th: Computing Cultural Heritage: Re-imagining Search & Discovery
Speaker: Benjamin Lee, Assistant Professor, Information School, University of Washington
When: 4PM EST
Where: In Person (HBK 2119) and Virtual, Register for the Zoom here
Abstract
Widespread efforts by libraries, archives, and museums have drastically improved digital access to collections. Yet, scholars and the public alike face a persistent challenge: how to explore and analyze these digital collections, which frequently contain millions of items and often suffer from imperfect metadata. My interdisciplinary research in this field of "computing cultural heritage" addresses this question by bringing together approaches from AI, library & information science, and the digital humanities in order to build and examine large-scale search systems for digital collections. In this talk, I will present my genealogy of work in this space. I will conclude with a horizon of opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.
Bio
Benjamin Charles Germain Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington, where he has started the Lab for Computing Cultural Heritage. Ben's research explores how to re-imagine search and discovery for large-scale digital collections held by libraries, archives, and museums. Previously, Ben has served as an Innovator in Residence as well as a Kluge Fellow in Digital Studies at the Library of Congress. He also was the inaugural Digital Humanities Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Ben received his Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington, which was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in machine learning.
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Diana Marsh
Assistant Professor of Archives & Digital Curation
University of Maryland College of Information Studies
Washington DC
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