Born Digital Cultural Heritage Conferentie

BDCH23 the third iteration of the Born Digital Cultural Heritage conference series. The first and second iterations – in 2014 and 2022 – brought together academics and practitioners from across the world to consider issues in the field of born digital heritage, from a range of disciplinary perspectives. A notable feature of this conference series has been the deliberate attempt to establish dialogue between those working in different professional fields. We recognise that born digital heritage reaches into all disciplines and that, if we want to make progress on the challenges of preserving born digital heritage, it takes people from a range of disciplines and professions working together. Therefore, we seek to break down professional silos and other barriers that inhibit the discussion and sharing of questions, knowledge and know how to address common challenges that we al face when researching, preserving and accessing different forms of born digital cultural heritage.

BDCH#23 will consider where born digital cultural heritage is at now. What are we making progress on and what are the urgent challenges? How are we going to safeguard our digital heritage for future generations?
For this event, we aim to expand the fields of discussions to include architecture and design and extend the focus on digital games and media arts to include websites, networking and other relevant domains. The challenges of preserving digital cultural heritage aren’t limited to legacy technologies, of course, but also affect contemporary platforms such as apps, VR, AR, etc.

BDCH#23 will be a hybrid conference held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne and online via zoom.

Access the full program for the Born Digital Cultural Heritage Conference held in 2022 with abstracts and recordings of all presentations.

Call for Papers

We invite proposals for papers that address the four sub-themes: Collecting, Curating, Preserving and Researching. as well as those that cut across these sub-themes.

Please send an abstract of 300 words, plus keywords and references, and a brief author biography (50-80 words) by July 27th, 2023.
Send proposals to aama@swin.edu.au
An anthology “On Revisiting 1990s Born Digital Artefacts” (working title) is planned after the conference.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Recognition of digital cultural heritage

• New approaches to collecting and curation

• Engaging audiences with legacy digital artefacts

• Exhibition case studies

• Policy directions

• Institutional interactions

• Networked initiatives and coalitions

• Distributed collections

• New approaches to loans

• New techniques in preservation

• Imagining future tools, methodologies, problems and/or solutions

• Legal developments

• Tools and practical case studies

• Training and workforce development

• Progress on emulation strategies

• Histories of the born digital

• Reflections from researchers on accessing newly re-accessible artworks

• Collaborations between practitioners and researchers.