DE-BIAS Resources and Capacity-Building Materials

Cultural heritage institutions in Europe and beyond have been undertaking work to describe and catalogue the historical objects in their collections for decades. However, once created, catalogue data are rarely updated to reflect changes in language and society. As a result, many object and collection descriptions that once fit into popular social narratives now convey outdated views that not only ignore and, therefore, alienate a wide range of people but, in some cases, use language that is offensive, inappropriate or even harmful.

Over the course of two years, the DE-BIAS project, co-funded under the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) of the European Union, aimed to promote a more inclusive and respectful approach to the description of digital collections and the telling of stories and histories of minoritised communities. DE-BIAS took a bottom-up approach. working with marginalised communities to improve the representation and participation of people who feel that museums and archives don’t speak of them or, worse, are not for them.

Focussing on the themes of migration and colonial history, gender and sexual identity, and ethnicity and ethno-religious identity, DE-BIAS has created a variety of resources, including a set of recommendations to represent diversity in cultural heritage metadata; a replicable methodology for cultural heritage institutions to engage with communities; several capacity building materials to follow yourself or to apply to your own context; the DE-BIAS vocabulary (covering terms in five languages) combining offensive language with contextual information and suggestions for appropriate terms; and the AI-powered DE-BIAS tool for use as a stand-alone application or for integration into existing workflows.