Title and Brief Description

This workshop intervenes in digital humanities’ large-scale, computation-heavy paradigm by foregrounding small data, community-engaged praxis, and ethically grounded uses of AI in digital public humanities. Through theoretical framing, hands-on methods, and a Smithsonian-led case study, the workshop demonstrates how AI-assisted annotation and storytelling can support interpretation, care, and collaboration when working with collections from historically marginalized communities. Participants will leave with transferable frameworks and practical tools for public-facing DH work that prioritize context, accountability, and human expertise.

Digital humanities is often perceived as dominated by large datasets and quantitative or computational analysis, particularly in fields such as literature, linguistics, geography, and information science. This workshop instead centers digital public humanities, a subfield focused on using digital tools and methods to work with and for the public. It introduces community-engaged praxis and examines theories and methods for collaborating with community members in digital research and storytelling. Emphasizing small data, the workshop highlights projects built around modest, specialized collections rather than massive corpora, and addresses both the challenges and opportunities of using AI to annotate, interpret, and present limited datasets.

Workshop organizers include scholars from the Smithsonian Institution and two U.S. public research universities. Drawing on their experience working with public stakeholders—including archivists, librarians, local municipalities, federal agencies, and historically marginalized communities—they will discuss ethical, methodological, and practical considerations of AI-assisted work with small collections. Key topics include ethics of care in digitization, training AI systems with data from marginalized communities, and interpreting archival silences and absences.

The workshop centers on the HBCU History and Culture Access Consortium (HCAC), a digital public history archive project led by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. HCAC makes visible the histories and collections of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) based on several years of collaboration with HBCU partners. Currently in its first phase, the project brings together approximately 3,000 items from archives and museums at five HBCUs. As a case study, HCAC provides concrete examples of context-driven metadata creation, AI-assisted annotation, and public-facing historical storytelling using small datasets.

The workshop is structured in four parts. The first introduces theories of community-engaged work in digital public humanities. The second examines methods, ethics, and techniques for using AI with small data projects. The third presents HCAC through a guided exploration of the project’s website, inviting participants to collectively interpret and analyze the data. The final section is hands-on: participants will use tools such as Omeka S to collaboratively curate a short digital story based on HCAC materials.

Intended Format of the Workshop

This is a half-day, hands-on workshop (approximately 3.5–4 hours including several short breaks) that combines conceptual framing, methodological instruction, case-study analysis, and guided participatory activities.

The workshop is structured in four pedagogical phases:

• Conceptual grounding in community-engaged digital public humanities, emphasizing ethics, care, reciprocity, and collaboration with marginalized communities.
• Methods and techniques for working with “small data” collections using AI-assisted tools, with attention to metadata, annotation, and interpretive limits.
• Applied case study through the HBCU History and Culture Access Consortium (HCAC), demonstrating workflows for aggregating, contextualizing, and interpreting modest archival and museum collections.
• Hands-on storytelling lab, in which participants work in small groups to build short interpretive narratives using digital platforms such as Omeka S.

The workshop balances short lectures with structured discussion, tool demonstrations, and guided participant activities. No prior technical expertise is required.

Agenda (Half-Day Workshop)

Call for Participation and Timeline

The workshop will not issue an open call for papers. Instead, it is designed as a skills- and praxis-based instructional workshop with a capped number of participants to facilitate hands-on engagement.

Participation will be limited, selected on a first-come basis through conference registration, with priority given to early-career scholars, graduate students, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, and community-engaged practitioners.