A lot of debate in 2020 revolved around how knowledge is produced, how we define trusted sources, and which information we privilege with exposure.
Museums are reappraising their own histories and asking whether they can challenge the biases they’re built on, while the technology sector is fighting an uphill battle to limit the spread of misinformation. These themes are colliding at Wellcome Collection where we’re building search algorithms for a museum collection.
We know that biases can be introduced or amplified in:
- The original material in the collection
- Descriptions of that material
- Algorithms and interfaces built for search
We’ve been quietly working on these problems for a while, but now we want to share what we’ve learned, allow people to challenge our assumptions, and hear your perspectives about how knowledge should be accessed.
If you have related thoughts, ideas, or experience, we want to hear them.
We've found that break-out rooms have worked well when the number of voices overwhelm the narrative of a discussion. By having more than one facilitator, we can each moderate a room with a smaller group and help guide a more coherent discussion.
Conversely, we're prepared for the situation in which fewer participants show up than expected; we're looking for deep discussion and consideration of the problem, and we can probe ideas more easily if there are only a few voices in the room
We're hoping that many efforts and discussions will continue after Mozfest. Share any ideas you already have for how to continue the work from your session.:We'll certainly be incorporating the ideas shared by participants in this session into our ongoing work on search and discovery. We're continuously refining the priciples that underly this work, and we're hoping that they're made stronger by opening them up to a public discussion. We also hope that if other participants are working on similar problems, they'll be able to take valuable lessons away from the discussion too, or that people with less direct experience come away with a better understanding of the challenges involved in this work.
Data Scientist at Wellcome Collection
TBA