Community-centered Ethics for Digital Cultural Heritage Materials: A dialogue on the tensions between consent, preservation, and access.

This panel discussion highlights the ethical issues of privacy, consent, and ownership of digitized cultural heritage materials held in library and museum collections around the globe. Megan Massanelli, Carolyn Friedrich, and David Grinnell will speak to the process of digitizing local LGBTQIA+ community publications where concerns are centered on informed consent, assumptions about anonymity in the original print medium, the right to be forgotten online, and community voices in those decisions about what is shared online. Jesse Obert will speak to his work with Greek material culture held outside of Greece in European and American museums, considering the absence of the Greek voice during the ongoing digitization of those materials as well as the ways in which European colonialism continues to exclude Greeks from their own cultural heritage, especially in the digital space.

How might researchers, educators, and scholars approach issues related to the access and use of digital surrogates? How might we advocate for community voices in the digitization, storage, and publication of cultural heritage materials? Join us for this conversation to learn more and connect with other Pitt community members interested in ethical approaches to cultural heritage data.

Speakers:

• Megan Massanelli, Archives & Special Collections Engagement and Outreach Librarian (University Library System)
• Carolyn Friedrich, Digital Collections Coordinator (University Library System)
• David Grinnell, Coordinator of Archives and Manuscripts (University Library System)
• Jesse Obert, Digital World History Postdoctoral Associate (World History Center)