Co-creation of AI technology, empowering curators of cultural heritage information and guarding research commons

2026-05-27

AI Summary

This study addresses the limited智能化 capabilities faced by cultural heritage institutions in managing and delivering digital collections by proposing and implementing a domain-specific, locally deployed Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework. Building upon the Dataverse data-sharing platform, the work develops a customizable and interactive local chatbot that transforms static archival access into an intelligent question-answering system. Emphasizing co-creation between technical development and cultural heritage practitioners, this approach not only upholds the open sharing of scholarly public resources but also significantly enhances user efficiency and experience in accessing specialized digital collections in the humanities and social sciences. The project thus offers a reproducible technical pathway for advancing digital services in the cultural heritage sector.

Abstract

The substance of this paper is the description of the use of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for specific digital collections of cultural assets. The collections are provided by institutions operating in the cultural sector. The topical areas are the humanities and social sciences. More concretely, most of the work presented here was enabled by a European-funded research project MuseIT which is clearly situated in the realm of fostering new technologies for Cultural Heritage. We adhere to this interaction by presenting a sequence of our experimentations. This sequence is narrated as a specific journey of engineering all executed around a specific data-sharing and archiving platform Dataverse. Implementing a local chatbot for collections - a method also known as RAG in Information Retrieval - is the current culmination of this journey. The engineering journey we describe in the core of the paper starts from "archives for everyone" and ends with "local chatbots for specific collections".

Problem

• AI co-creation
• cultural heritage
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation
• research commons
• digital collections

Innovation

• Retrieval-Augmented Generation
• Cultural Heritage
• Dataverse
• Local Chatbot
• Digital Collections