Proceedings of the Conference
          Collect and Connect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age
                                 (COLCO2020)
                                       November 23-24, 2020


Preface
The international conference Collect and Collect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age (COLCO
2020) officially concluded the NWO1/Brill Creative Industries Project Making Sense of Illustrated
Handwritten Archives. This collaborative research project was carried out by the Leiden Centre of Data
Science (LCDS), Naturalis Biodiversity Center, the universities of Groningen (ALICE), Leiden
(LIACS), and Twente (STePS), and publisher Brill as creative industry partner from early 2016 until
December 2020. The aim of the project was to develop user engineered computational methods to
recognize and semantically interpret heterogeneous digital archival collections. 2 The consortium’s
research was financed by the Dutch Research Council’s Creative Industry programme as well as Brill
publishers under the grant number: 652.001.001. The aims of this final conference were twofold. First,
to present the 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 professionals in the
field of digital cultural and natural heritage.
         The international Collect and Connect conference took place on November 25 and 26, 2020 and
was organized and chaired by Dr. Andreas Weber (University of Twente), Dr. Eulàlia Gassó Miracle
(Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden), Maarten Heerlien (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), and Dr. Katy
Wolstencroft (Leiden University). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was organized as a
virtual event. Despite limitations in online communication, the
conference attracted substantial international attention. We
received 19 submissions out of which 9 were selected
(acceptance rate: 47,4%). Each submission received at least 2
extensive reviews by experts in the field. All papers were
presented and discussed during the conference and are
included in these proceedings. In addition to the peer reviewed
papers, the conference had three keynote lectures by Dr.
Sharon Leon (Michigan State University), Prof. Franco
Niccolucci (PIN – University of Florence), and Prof. Lambert
Schomaker (University of Groningen), and a variety of
interactive formats, such as round table discussions and
demos. These sessions are not part of these proceedings. The
conference, which attracted more than 300 registered
participants from all over the world, led to lively discussions
among computer scientists, humanities scholars, and digital
heritage, collection, and archive professionals.

1
 Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Dutch Research Council).
2
  Weber, A., Ameryan, M., Wolstencroft, K., Stork, L., Heerlien, M., Schomaker, L.: Towards a Digital
Infrastructure for Illustrated Handwritten Archives. In: Ioannides, M. (ed.), Digital Cultural Heritage, ITN-DCH
2017, LNCS, vol. 10605, pp. 155-166. Springer, Heidelberg (2018), 10.1007/978-3-319-75826-8_13; Stork, L.,
Weber, A., Gassó Miracle, E., Verbeek, F., Plaat, A., Van den Herik, J, Wolstencroft, K.: Semantic Annotation of
Natural History Collections. Journal of Web Semantics 59, 100462 (2019), 10.1016/j.websem.2018.06.002;
Gassó, E., Stork, L., Weber, A., Ameryan, M., Wolstencroft, K., Natuurkundige Commissie Archives Online.
Leiden, Brill (2020), https://dh.brill.com/nco/.
         Thematically, the conference, and also this proceedings volume, focusses on the question of
how computational technologies can help libraries, archives and museums to enrich their digitized
archives and collections with contextual information, in order to make them retrievable and interlinked
in novel ways. A major challenge in the field is the heterogenous character of many of such digitized
collections. Many handwritten archives, archives of sound and moving images, and collections of
physical objects in the realms of natural history, archeology, history, and art history, entail combinations
of textual and visual elements. The interpretation of such material requires a range of different expertise
and computational technologies. The papers of this proceedings offer a rich insight in how different
computational technologies can help to enrich heterogenous digitized collections with context.
         We would like to thank the international program committee who has helped us to process and
review all submissions. The program committee consisted of the following researchers (in alphabetical
order): Rasa Bocyte (The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision), Dr. Giovanni Colavizza (Leiden
University/University of Amsterdam, UvA), Dr. Marieke van Erp (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts
and Sciences, KNAW), Prof. Charles van den Heuvel (KNAW), Laurens Hogeweg (Naturalis
Biodiversity Center), Prof. Aske Plaat (Leiden University), Dr. Annemieke Romein (KNAW), Prof.
Steven Verstockt (Ghent University), Dr. Lorella Viola (Université de Luxembourg), Dr. Marco
Wiering (University of Groningen), and Dr. Gerben Zaagsma (Université de Luxembourg). The
programme committee was chaired by Prof. Jaap van den Herik and Prof. Fons Verbeek, both from
Leiden University.
         Finally, we would like to thank our sponsors. Without the additional financial support of the
Dutch Research Council (NWO) and Brill publishers, we would not have been able to organize and hold
this conference.




January 2021

                                                                                   Andreas Weber
                                                                             Eulàlia Gassó Miracle
                                                                                  Maarten Heerlien
                                                                                 Katy Wolstencroft