The Yale Digital Humanities Laboratory welcomed researchers from across campus, the Smithsonian Institution, the Getty Research Institute, and Carnegie Mellon University for a one-day symposium on machine vision for cultural heritage and natural science collections.

The mass digitization of large-scale visual collections creates new challenges for curators and researchers alike. Simultaneously, the rapid pace of industry innovation in deep learning (from guiding self-driving cars to captioning smartphone images) demands the attention of library, museum, and academic professionals.

Existing practices of cataloging and description can be augmented by recent advancements in machine vision, and human expertise can likewise guide the development of future algorithms for the humanities and sciences alike. To showcase work that’s underway and explore potential collaborations, the Yale-Smithsonian Partnership sponsored a symposium on the topic of machine learning for cultural heritage and natural science collections. The event brought together scholars and curators from both institutions for conversations, demonstrations, and future partnerships.

For more information and to see a list of speakers from the event, please visit the project page.