DE-BIAS project capacity building resources

The DE-BIAS project aimed to promote a more inclusive and respectful approach to the description of digital collections and the telling of stories of minoritised communities. Building the capacity of professionals and users alike to be aware of and address the issues the project raises has been a key part of the project. This was achieved through events and workshops over its lifetime, as well as the development of topic and activity specific materials that bring together the project’s experiences in community engagement and co-creation activities.

Use this page to explore and use capacity building resources developed by the project.

The DE-BIAS guidelines on representing diversity in metadata are a set of recommendations and an implementation strategy for cultural heritage professionals which share the actions and approaches which need to be taken to ‘debias’ the metadata of cultural heritage collections. They are designed to empower readers, whether they are shaping policy or managing collections, and suggest a series of smaller and bigger changes that can lead to huge strides in representation, accessibility, and cultural understanding.

There are two sets of guidelines addressing cultural heritage professionals and policy makers separately. They cover both the topics of community engagement and technology. Additionally, the guidelines for cultural heritage institutions cover the topics metadata plus processes and workflows, while the guidelines for policy makers look at revisiting funding schemes and fostering the more general change in paradigm.

Both sets are available summarised in several languages to help a broad distribution and uptake across national boundaries; download them in English, Dutch and German below. 

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 will become available for beta testing in January 2025.

About the course

Participants will learn about bias in cultural heritage collections, why it is relevant to digital cultural heritage, and how one can identify and work with bias in digital cultural heritage collections. They will be introduced to the concepts behind community engagement, and learn with selected examples how they can set up community events in their own contexts. They will also gain an understanding of what to be aware of when debiasing digital cultural heritage collections. The latter part will also introduce tools such as the ‘Wheel of Bias’, the DE-BIAS vocabulary, and the standalone version of the AI-powered DE-BIAS tool.

Audience

The course is for cultural heritage professionals who want to learn about how to identify and work on bias in their own collections, researchers who want to learn more about the current thinking and trends in bias in digital cultural heritage, and culture lovers who want to learn more about the current conversations in the cultural heritage sector and how they can contribute.

Format

Each chapter is broken down into several subchapters, so that the course can easily be paused at any time, and includes various exercises. After successfully completing all relevant parts and exercises, the learners will receive a certificate.

Register now

If you would like to be among the first to complete the interactive lecture ‘Bias in digital cultural heritage collections’ and help us user-test the course while doing so, please reach out to us via project.debias@gmail.com. You can also explore other courses and training available through Europeana Academy.