AI and Cultural Heritage - Symposium at the Austrian National Library
Cultural Sovereignty, Open Data and Their Machine Use
When: Monday, 30 November 2026, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Where: Oratory of the Austrian National Library, Josefsplatz 1, 1010 Vienna.
Registration: You can register here free of charge until 23 November 2026.
Artificial intelligence is on everyone’s mind, in particular for the institutions and interfaces where cultural heritage becomes, or is intended to become, “open data.” AI accelerates and intensifies the comprehensive digital documentation and indexing of knowledge collections and information. Yet AI is also a source of unease in ethical, legal and technical respects. Opening up knowledge and data necessarily exposes them to commercial interests and to the AI harvesting practices of large technology corporations.
The symposium “AI and Cultural Heritage” at the Austrian National Library discusses perspectives, solution approaches and practical experiences from various knowledge institutions and puts them up for discussion together with experts and a specialist audience.
From the programme:
- Welcome by State Secretary Alexander Pröll, LL.M.
- “Open Data, Trustworthy AI: Cultural Heritage and Innovation Illustrated by DHinfra.at” — Keynote by Mag. Walter Scholger, Deputy Head of the Institute for Digital Humanities, University of Graz.
- “Sharing Without Selling Out. Open Data in the Age of AI” — Keynote by Prof. Dr. Barbara Prainsack, Professor of Comparative Policy Analysis, University of Vienna
You can find the detailed symposium programme here:
Programme