Address bias in your cultural heritage collections with the DE-BIAS project

The EU-funded DE-BIAS project (Jan 2022 - Dec 2024) aims to detect and contextualize harmful language in cultural heritage collections aggregated in Europeana.eu. It also supports cultural heritage professionals in addressing bias in their collections. Partners in the project include the European Film Gateway and similar platforms that provide data from archives to Europeana. A recent blog post on Europeana Pro provides insights into the project's upcoming plans for capacity-building events for cultural heritage professionals. These events will consist of a series of webinars, workshops, and other activities. They will focus on several key areas, such as working with marginalized communities, applying the automatic tool developed within the project to detect bias in archive databases, and utilizing the vocabulary of contentious terms that serves as the foundation for the tool to identify corresponding language in object descriptions. The DE-BIAS project, led by the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, seeks to enhance awareness of bias in cultural heritage collections and equip professionals with the tools and knowledge necessary to address it effectively.