Explore the DE-BIAS Knowledge Hub
Funded under the Digital Europe Programme of the European Union, the DE-BIAS project has aimed to promote a more inclusive and respectful approach to describing cultural heritage collections and to the telling of stories and histories of minoritised communities. Eleven partner organisations, including the Archives Portal Europe Foundation and coordinated by the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut und Filmmuseum, have collaborated over the course of two years on a variety of activities: from engaging with minoritised communities hitherto under- or misrepresented in cultural heritage collections and their descriptions, to the creation of a multilingual vocabulary contextualising bias terms, to the development of an AI-powered tool designed to detect offensive terms in the metadata of cultural heritage collections. The outcome of these activities and more has now been made available in the DE-BIAS Knowledge Hub.
Overarching capacity building resources
Bringing the experiences and insights of all different project activities together, the DE-BIAS project has defined a set of guidelines on representing diversity in metadata. These guidelines are designed to empower readers and cover various areas of an organisation's work with cultural heritage collections, suggesting a series of smaller and bigger changes that can lead to huge strides in representation, accessibility, and cultural understanding. Next to the more extensive version, two sets of more focussed guidelines have been developed, one aiming at cultural heritage professionals, the other addressing policy makers. Both are available not only in English, but also in Dutch, French, German and Italian.
For anyone who is interested in building capacity on the DE-BIAS project’s topics at their own pace, the training course ‘Bias in digital cultural heritage collections’ is perfect. Made available through the Europeana Training Platform, this self-paced course is currently available for testing.
Community engagement
A close and active collaboration with minoritised communities in relation to the three themes that the DE-BIAS project focussed on - migration and colonial past, gender and sexual identity, ethno-religious identity - has been the heart of the project. This collaboration formed the basis for awareness raising on the topic of bias in general and refinement of the sensitivities of the topic in particular. It provided a starting point and a sounding board in the co-creation process of the DE-BIAS vocabulary. It ensured the input from the minoritised communities themselves into validation and evaluation processes in the context of developing the DE-BIAS tool. It broadened the voices and perspectives represented at capacity building and other project events.
For anyone who wants to engage with minoritised communities in relation to their own collections, the DE-BIAS Knowledge Hub holds a trove of resources at your disposal:
- The Community Engagement Methodology, which offers a blueprint for cultural heritage institutions looking to engage communities more effectively and equitably;
- The Recommendations for Community Engagement, which build on the experiences of the DE-BIAS partners and insights gathered in practice;
- Background on the concepts and policies of community engagement and a series of other resources and blog post describing the DE-BIAS partners approaches and learnings.
The DE-BIAS Vocabulary
The DE-BIAS Vocabulary is one of the key achievements of the project, resulting from the engagement with minoritised communities as well as building on existing vocabularies covering specific categories of bias such as Words Matter or Homosaurus. It identifies almost 700 contentious terms commonly used in cultural heritage metadata in five languages (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian). The vocabulary provides context and historical background for each term and suggests alternatives where available. It is available in three formats:
- As PDF document, with a separate document for each language part of the vocabulary;
- As machine-readable knowledge graph, based on the Words Matter Knowledge Graph by Cultural AI and available on EU Vocabularies;
- A spreadsheet open for comments, which will be the main source for continuing and extending the work on the vocabulary now that the project has ended.
In addition to the vocabulary, the DE-BIAS Typology has been a useful resource for analysing patterns of bias in the collections made available through Europeana.eu, taking into account the interplay of language and visual (mis-)representation as well.
The DE-BIAS tool
The DE-BIAS vocabulary forms the basis for the detection processes of the DE-BIAS tool, which utilises a series of Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to identify, flag and contextualise outdated or potentially harmful terms in object descriptions of cultural heritage collections. The tool is available as a standalone web application and as an API endpoint and has also been integrated in the Metis Sandbox, used by aggregators and cultural heritage institutions when preparing data to be shared on Europeana.eu.
With the tool's outputs, you can create statistics of biassed terms found in the collections you work with as a basis for next steps, e.g. annotating those terms with contextual information and, where appropriate, suggestions for alternative wording.
Inspiring editorials
Next to all the resources mentioned above, the DE-BIAS Knowledge Hub now also brings together the DE-BIAS blog series published on Europeana Pro and on Europeana.eu throughout the project's lifetime. On Europeana Pro, the series has traced the evolution of the project, beginning with its foundational principles of inclusivity and community engagement, and progressing through key developments, such as the application of knowledge co-creation methodologies, capacity building initiatives and the introduction of the Community Engagement Methodology. On Europeana.eu the series has delved deeper into the thematic dimensions of the project, reflecting on postcolonial narratives, queer representation, and inclusive archival practices, including ‘A Queer Tour Exhibition’ and an article about ‘Claude Cahun’ exploring the role of LGBTQ+ perspectives in reshaping cultural narratives or ‘Colonial Depictions’ and ‘Co-curating Postcolonialism’ examining strategies for deconstructing colonial legacies in visual and textual representations. Authored by experts and community collaborators, these posts provide nuanced reflections on how cultural institutions can critically reassess their collections and engagement strategies.