Workshop “Exploring the digital heritage of reading: multilingualism, automatic detection and annotation”

16 Apr, 2026

On May 13, the sixth seminar in the series organized by digitalhumanities.lv and DARIAH-LV will take place. The workshop “Exploring the digital heritage of reading: multilingualism, automatic detection and annotation” will be led by visiting researcher Dr. François Vignale from Le Mans University. In his lecture, he will introduce the interdisciplinary project READ-IT, which brings together social sciences, Digital Humanities, and computer science to study reading experiences in Europe across different times and contexts.

The workshop will explore innovative methods and tools for analyzing multilingual text corpora, automatically identifying and semantically annotating descriptions of reading experiences, as well as assessing the impact of reading on individuals’ lives. Technologies developed within the project will also be presented, including natural language processing (NLP), ontologies, and semantic search solutions that enable large-scale exploration of digital sources.

Dr. François Vignale works at Le Mans University (3L.AM lab). His research focuses on the study of reading practices and cultural history in combination with Digital Humanities and Information Sciences (knowledge organization, data modeling, textual data analysis). He has authored or co-authored 20 papers. Within the EU-funded READ-IT project, he was in charge of the design of the Reading Experiences Ontology (REO) and coordinated the ICT aspects, in particular the integration and validation of NLP-based data exploration tools.

The worksjop will take place on May 13 at 15:00, in person at the Reading Room of the Archives of Latvian Folklore, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia (5th floor of the National Library of Latvia), as well as online via Zoom.

Working language: English.

📝 Please register whether you plan to attend in person or online:

🔗 ej.uz/dh-seminars-13052026

The workshop is organized within the project “University of Latvia and Institutes in the European Research Area – Excellence in Research and Collaboration” (No. 1.1.1.5/3/25/I/011).

April 24 – practical DH seminar “What to do with a table?!”

14 Apr, 2026

Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia (ILFA) Digital Humanities (DH) seminar series continues to develop. This spring, a new thematic strand has been introduced – “Digital tools I use”. The aim of this initiative is to create a space for researchers who use digital methods in their work to share practical experience: to demonstrate their workflows, talk about the tools they use, and openly discuss not only successes but also challenges, mistakes, and solutions. The new format emphasizes the exchange of experience “from practice to practice”.

Citizen Science and Artificial Intelligence in the Preservation of Ukrainian Cultural Heritage

10 Apr, 2026

On March 27 and April 4, the Digital Humanities Center (DHC) of the Faculty of Humanities (HZF) and the Library of the University of Latvia (LUB) organized two Ukrainian cultural heritage data workshops as citizen science activities within the framework of the AISTER project. Participants included youth from the Ukrainian community and their friends from Young Folks LV, members of academia, and other interested individuals. Together, they helped to improve an Artificial Intelligence (AI) prototype's ability to recognize elements within images of Ukrainian ethnographic artifacts.

The work took place on Europeana CrowdHeritage, a platform created for crowdsourcing campaigns using metadata from European cultural heritage institutions, utilizing a prototype developed by the AISTER project partner, Web2Learn.