Call for papers


International Conference:

Collect & Connect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age

23-24 November 2020

Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden (*)


Conference chairs:

A. Weber (University of Twente), E. Gassó Miracle (Naturalis Biodiversity Center), K. Wolstencroft (Leiden University), M. Heerlien (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam)

Program chairs:

J. van den Herik (Leiden University) & F. Verbeek (Leiden University)

(*) COVID-19 UPDATE: Due to current COVID-19 regulations, this conference will take place as online event.

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for the international conference Collect & Connect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age. The conference will be held at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden (*) from 23-24 November 2020. The aims of this international conference which officially concludes the NWO/Brill Creative Industries Project Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives are twofold. First, to present results of finished and original research in the field of digitized archives and natural and cultural heritage collections. Second, to promote exchange and discussion between researchers and heritage professionals in the field of digital natural and cultural heritage. Next to specialized paper presentations, the conference will also entail a variety of interactive formats (e.g., round tables or demos). Six to eight papers presented at the conference are expected to be selected for publication in the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH). All positively reviewed papers shall be submitted as proceedings volume to CEUR-WS.org for online publication. Confirmed keynote speakers are:


Paper formats & submission:

    • Regular papers with 10 to 12 pages (max. 12 pages, min. 10 pages) and short papers with 5 to 9 pages (max. 9 pages, min. 5 pages) need to be submitted through EasyChair.

    • All papers will be thoroughly peer-reviewed by at least two members of the conference's program committee.

    • More detailed guidelines for paper submissions can be found ==> here.

    • Templates for paper submissions can be found ==> here.

Important dates:

    • ==> final deadline extension: 28 September 2020 / 11 September 2020 (deadline for short and long papers)

    • 23 October 2020 (registration for conference will open)

    • ==> new date: 23 October 2020 / 2 October 2020 (notification of authors)

    • 20 November 2020 (camera-ready papers)

Thematic scope of the conference:

In recent years, libraries, archives and museums have spent major efforts on annotating and enriching their digitized archives and collections with contextual information, in order to make them retrievable and interlinked in novel ways. Often institutions aim to enhance their reach and relevance for broader user groups. A major challenge in the field is the heterogeneous character of many of such digitized collections. Many handwritten archives and collections of physical objects in the realms of natural history, archaeology, history, and art history entail combinations of textual and visual elements whose interpretation requires a range of different expertises and computational technologies. This conference therefore welcomes papers that present, discuss, and reflect upon the technical, social, and institutional challenges digital heritage professionals and researchers encounter when enriching heterogeneous digitized collections with context.


Topics include, but are not limited to:

    • Semantic web approaches to interlinking digitized historical archives and collections

    • Text and image interpretation in digital collections

    • Multimodal collection interpretation and access

    • Handwriting recognition and heterogeneous digital collections

    • Machine learning and digital collections

    • Bias and digital heritage

    • Computer vision and digital collections

    • Digital collections' access and inclusivity

    • Sharing and visualisation of heterogeneous historical archives and collections

    • Citizen science (including crowdsourcing) and digital archives and collections

    • Challenges of enriching digitized handwritten archive material

    • Digital capture and annotation of heterogeneous collections and artefacts

    • Dealing with uncertainty, quality issues, data bias and collection gaps

    • Geographical and spatial enrichment of collections

    • Application of common vocabularies and data reconciliation

All positively reviewed papers shall be included in the conference proceedings submitted to CEUR-WS.org (ISSN: 1613-0073) for online publication. CEUR-WS.ORG is an open access and no-profit repository with high reputation. It is managed by a number of German universities and is regularly crawled by Scopus, google scholar, etc. We will also make sure that the Collect&Connect volume is indexed by DBLP. More information about CEUR-WS.ORG can be found here.

Six to eight papers selected among those presented at the conference are expected to be selected for publication in the Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH). The authors of the selected papers will be asked to extend their conference papers to comply with the editorial standards of the Journal. They will be informed at the end of the Conference by the Selection Committee, formed by the Conference Chairs and JOCCH Editor-in-Chief, and will provided with a suitable deadline to prepare their papers for publication. Thus, to publish in this Special Issue it is necessary to present the paper at the International Conference Collect&Connect.

If you have questions about this CfP and/or the conference, please contact the conference chairs: Andreas Weber (University of Twente), Eulàlia Gassó Miracle (Naturalis Biodiversity Center), Katy Wolstencroft (Leiden University), Maarten Heerlien (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam).