Program item

Archiving 2025

Can/Should AI Do That? Heritage Digitization Use Cases for AI

SC12

Can/Should AI Do That? Heritage Digitization Use Cases for AI
Instructor(s): Julie McVey, National Geographic Society, and Doug Peterson, Digital Transitions
Level: Introductory
Duration: 2 hours
Course Time: 16:30-18:30

Benefits
This course enables the attendee to:
- Understand basic ML/AI tools and techniques commonly used in a heritage context and how to apply them to address real-world problems
- How to pitch a proposed AI/ML project to a variety of audiences
- Identify stakeholders, evaluate and manage risk, and select vendors if necessary
- Outline a project proposal with a summary, goals, objectives, and phased workflow timeline
- Develop a framework to evaluate project phases and effectiveness against applicable criteria

Course Description
Heritage uses of AI tools can be effective, ineffective, or in the worst case, destructive. It is crucial to understand the capabilities and limitations of AI, and to establish a robust framework for evaluating its use in cultural heritage before starting any AI project. The course opens with introducing attendees to AI in a heritage context with use cases that demonstrate a variety of tools and techniques from course instructors’ own projects. We will also introduce evaluation frameworks and talk about how best to structure AI projects ethically and responsibly, using the participants’ own project ideas or research questions as working examples.

Intended Audience: Digitization program managers, collection managers, digital project librarians, and other professionals tasked with digitization and metadata project management. No prerequisite knowledge is necessary.

Julie McVey is Director of Digital Collections for the National Geographic Society’s Special Collections. She oversees the Special Collections digital preservation program and provides expertise in digital curation, metadata standards, technology innovations, and collections accessibility and outreach. She holds an MA in History and an MLIS, both from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Doug Peterson is co-owner and head of R+D and product management at Digital Transitions. He holds a BS in Commercial Photography from Ohio University. He is the lead author of a series of technical guidelines and recommendations for cultural heritage digitization, including the Phase One Color Reproduction Guide, Imaging for the Future: Digitization Program Planning, and the DT Digitization Guides for Reflective and Transmissive Workflows. He oversees the DT Digitization Certification training series and has presented multiple short courses at previous Archiving conferences. Peterson is a member of ISO TC 42, which works on digitization standards.