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This working paper resulted from two (hybrid) workshops conducted in May and June 2022, chaired by Professor James Smithies (King’s College London) at the request of Tao-Tao Chang, AHRC Head of (Research) Infrastructure. The workshops were conceived and organised by Dr. Anna-MariaSichani (AHRC Policy and Engagement Fellow), and hosted at The Alan Turing Institute. Contributors are listed in Appendix 4.

As the primary resource for preschool children, picture books,and their gender narratives, can unconsciously shape and changechildren’s perceptions of sex roles and gender identity (Bleakley etal., 1988; Connor & Serbin, 1978; Latima, 2020). However, existingstudies show concerning trends in the representation of genderinequality in modern picture books, such as the overwhelmingnumber of male main characters and traditional gender stereotypesof vocations, personalities and habits (Casey et al., 2021; Hamiltonet al., 2006; Lee & Chin, 2019; Terras, 2018). It is thereforeimportant for children’s picture books to have diverse gender descriptionsand improved equal gender representations.Since the second Feminist Movement in the 1960s, gender equalityin UK children’s picture books have been continuously examinedyet slowly improved (Adams et al., 2011; Allen et al., 1993;Capuzza, 2020; Hamilton et al., 2006). Similar studies have beenfar less common in China, as the Chinese picture book market onlydeveloped from the start of the 21 st Century (Xiao, 2021). Onestudy has shown the existence of the traditional gender biases inChinese picture books (Liu & Chen, 2018). Based on the researchgap between these two countries, this study will (1) investigategender representations and narratives in picture books, (2) comparethe similarities and differences between bestselling Britishand Chinese picture books texts from 2010 to 2020. We do so byapplying text mining techniques to analyse gender narratives withinpicture book texts themselves. This follows on from our 2022study where we analysed publisher’s descriptions of texts, ratherthan full text mining of the book’s content (Li et al., 2022).

This presentation reports on a case study investigating how NaturalLanguage Processing, a field that applies computational methodssuch as Machine Learning to human-written texts, can supportthe measurement and evaluation of gender biased languagein archival catalogs. Working with English descriptions from thecatalog metadata of the University of Edinburgh’s Archives, wecreated an annotated dataset and classification models that identifygender biases in the descriptions. Conducted with archival data,the case study holds relevance across Galleries, Libraries, Archives,and Museums (GLAM), particularly for institutions withcatalog descriptions in English. In addition to bringing NaturalLanguage Processing (NLP) methods to Archives, we identifiedopportunities to bring Archival Science methods, such as CulturalHumility (Tai, 2021) and Feminist Standpoint Appraisal (Caswell,2022), to NLP. Through this two-way disciplinary exchange,we demonstrate how Humanistic approaches to bias and uncertaintycan upend legacies of gender-based oppression that mostcomputational approaches to date uphold when working with dataat scale.

Computational analysis that demonstrates biased representationsrelated to ethnicities has been widely covered in literature(see, for example, Garg et al. 2018, Tripodi et al. 2019, Lucy etal. 2020). Previous research in computational approaches has revealeddiachronic change of concepts in general (Tahmasebi et al.2018) and for the representation of antisemitism, in particular (Tripodiet al. 2019). However, literature that shows how local representationsof ethnic minorities change through contexts revealedin museum catalogues and metadata, how they are tagged, contextualisedand processed through museum databases, and consequentlywhat kind of knowledge is produced and/or retrieved, isrelatively scarce. In this paper we demonstrate how conceptual representationsrelated to Jews and Armenians fluctuate, dependingon where contexts related to these ethnic minorities are produced.The aim of this paper is to show how the analysis of museumcatalogues and online museum collections can reveal the differenceover geographic areas in dominating attitudes and multipleperspectives in the perception of minority cultures. We comparesearch results related to Jews and Armenians for the British Museumin London and the State Historical Museum in Moscow.The museums were chosen as they both represent an ‘imperial archive’(Barringer and Flynn 1998, p. 11, Khazanov 2000), theyhave collections that include multiple historical objects and theyare both located in capital cities for the two countries.Their onlinedigital collections produce sufficient results to analyse the representationof minorities and the perspectives of these two majormemory institutions on what is deemed an ethnic minority.

We present a speculative design of handwritten text recognition(HTR), a form of automatic image-to-text recognition, resultingin plain text files of historical materials which can be presentedin a variety of formats (Muehlberger et. al 2019). HTR isbeginning to shift historical methods and practice, from samplingdata to exhaustive interrogation of primary sources (Muehlbergeret al. 2019). The aspiration of recognising the hands of peoplefrom various backgrounds, nationalities, professions, and education,with equal competence, surety and speed, has largely beenrealised (although this remains to be seen for marginalised communities).However, questions of equity, diversity and inclusion inthe technology and tools of HTR are yet to be properly addressed.This paper will adopt a speculative design approach to imaginea minimal HTR design, informing how collaboration and inclusivityare approached in the next stage of its development.

Drawing on the legacies of its traditional humanistic domains oforigin, the Digital Humanities have inherited many of their structures- despite the DH’s self-understanding as “revolutionary”.At our panel we want to approach the theme of the conference(“Collaboration as Opportunity”, especially the call for “Revolutions”:https://dh2023.adho.org/?page_id=310) from an international,multimodal perspective, informed by the discourse about culturalcriticism in DH.We would like to interrogate areas in the ‘borderlands’ (Earhart2018) of the field as areas where the DH still have the potential forrevolutions. In our panel, we hope to shed light on blind spots inthe DH such as monolingualism (Fiormonte 2021), a heritage ofcolonialism (Risam 2019) and gender imbalance (Gao et al. 2022,330), to name but a few. These issues concern not only our researchdata, as Daniele Metilli illustrates on the example of bordersand absences in Hans Sloane’s collection, but also societal issueswithin the field itself, as Melissa Terras discusses: The DH’s selfperceptionas challenging power structures conflicts with the factthat the DH as field are part of the Academy and thus, inherit itsstructural problems such as precarious employment. Quinn Dombrowskipresents the Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online(SUCHO) initiative in which volunteers assisted with web archivingUkraine's cultural heritage sector and the balancing act involved,navigating between activism and listening to the needs ofthose affected. Dibyadyuti Roy and Domenico Fiormonte addressthe issue of broken promises with regard to the DH’s revolutionarypotential and disillusionment with regard to decolonising thefield. Padmini Ray Murray explores how design can realise theDH’s feminist and decolonial potential to democratise as well aspromote real inclusivity and participation on a global scale.

This paper discusses best practices for sharing and reusing Ground Truth in Handwritten Text Recognition infrastructures, as well as ways to reference and acknowledge contributions to the creation and enrichment of data within these systems. We discuss how one can place Ground Truth data in a repository and, subsequently, inform others through HTR-United. Furthermore, we want to we want to suggest appropriate citation methods for HTR data, models, and contributions made by volunteers. Moreover, when using digitised sources (digital facsimiles), it becomes increasingly important to distinguish between the physical object and the digital collection. These topics all relate to the proper acknowledgement of labour put into digitising, transcribing, and sharing Ground Truth HTR data. This also points to broader issues surrounding the use of machine learning in archival and library contexts, and how the community should begin to acknowledge and record both contributions and data provenance.

When the pandemic began to affect the performance world, both festival artists and producers started to adopt creative approaches to moving their work online. In the study presented here, we focus on the 2020 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which offered a unique opportunity to understand how performers coped with the enforced switch to digital. Underpinning the Fringe Festival ethos is the attitude of experimentation, and we propose that there is much to learn from the response of performers and producers to this unprecedented situation. As one interviewee put it; ‘we got given a hefty dose of lemons, and the point of all of this was, just go and make lemonade and see what happens’ (Yvette). In this article, we focus on the challenge of managing the audience experience in the digital space, particularly before and after a performance. We note that familiar rituals play a key role for physical audiences and we position this idea within the Trajectories Framework, identifying coherent journeys through a user experience (Benford and Giannachi 2011. Performing Mixed Reality. The MIT Press. ISBN:978-0-262-01576-9), in order to frame it with digital audiences in mind. We provide recommendations regarding aspects for performers and producers to address as online and digital becomes an increasingly accepted part of the festival landscape.

Oceanic Exchanges: Tracing Global Information Networks in Historical New spaper Repositories, 1840 -1914 (OcEx) brings together leading efforts in computational periodicals res earch from the nine academic partners in US, Mexico, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland an d the UK to examine patterns of information flow across national and linguistic boundaries in nineteenth century newspapers by linking digitized newspaper corpora currently siloed in natio nal collections. OcEx seeks to break through the conceptual, institutional, and political barriers which have limited working with big humanities data by bringing together historical newspaper experts from different countries and disciplines around common questions; by actively cro ssing the national boundaries that have previously separated digitized newspaper corpora through computat ional analysis; and by illustrating the global connectedness of nineteenth-century newspapers in way s hidden by typical national organizations of digital cultural heritage.

Digital approaches to Jewish Studies allow collecting data from multiple sources. This enlarges the picture, makes our understanding of historical experiences more complete, and triggers further research questions. This chapter compares samples of artworks from digital online collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Russian State Catalogue of Museum Collections in the Russian Federation. We show that the difference in their temporal and geographical coverage of Jewish artworks/historical documents often results from tagging, naming and understanding of what is deemed Jewish. The collective decisions made in these datasets, by many individuals, and differing institutions about cataloguing, indexing, and returning searches on Jewish culture in a digital age inform what parts of Jewish culture are accessible. The technological and data-led decisions become a part of multiple layers of decisions that inform how primary sources are formed in a digital age.

This report provides a snapshot of the state and needs of creative freelancers in the Edinburgh region in 2022. The last few years have been both interesting and challenging for creative freelancers in Scotland. Given the constraints caused by the Covid pandemic, Brexit, and rising inflation and the cost of living, many freelancers have found themselves having to rethink their practice, strategies and life choices. While this unprecedented period hasn’t yet come to an end, it has highlighted the importance of the creative industries to the creative economy more than ever before. At Creative Edinburgh, we strive to help creative practitioners develop and thrive throughout their journey, and we have done this for over a decade. It is essential for us to understand more about the community that we represent and freelancers play an important role in this large group of creatives. We seek to create a roadmap which will help Creative Edinburgh, but also other sector support agencies, to plan ahead to better support freelancers in the future. Launched by Creative Edinburgh, the largest creative membership organisation in Edinburgh (5400+ members), with support from Creative Informatics, an ambitious research and development programme based in Edinburgh, this report was developed in collaboration with local creative freelance professionals, academic researchers and partnering organisations interested in valuable data relating to the sector, as the activity and growth of the creative sector evolves. Focussed on freelancers and Creative Industry professionals living and working in Scotland, the information collected through this research provides a unique insight into the current status of the local sector, with the effects of Covid-19 and Brexit starting to make an impact. It raises a number of important issues which will be reported to the Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council, Creative Scotland and other stakeholders in view of improving available support and resources. Please note: the CC license for this file applies to thetextof this report only and not to graphic elements which should be regarded as copyright and requiring written permission before any potential onwards publication.&nbsp