3rd International Conference on Museum Big Data (MBD2024)

The 3rd International Conference on Big Data in Museums (Museum Big Data – MBD2024, https://2024.museumbigdata.org/) took place on 18-19 November 2024 at the “Ioannis Dracopoulos” Amphitheater of the Central Building of the University of Athens (NKUA), Panepistimiou 30 in Athens, with the possibility of online monitoring (https://ionio-gr.zoom.us/j/98499042110).

The MBD2024 conference was organized by the Ionian University (Laboratory of Museology & Laboratory of Digital Libraries and Electronic Publications, Department of Archives, Library Science and Museology) and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Laboratory of Electronic Management of Historical Archives).

The conference is a meeting point for academics, museum professionals, big data experts and digital technology innovators, with the aim of exploring the contribution of big data to the management and promotion of cultural heritage. In addition, it aims to present experimental works as well as best practices from cultural heritage and memory institutions, such as galleries, library archives, whose work can provide inspiring examples for the museum sector.

The conference themes were:
• Big data analysis in cultural institutions
• Data-driven decision-making for museum management
• Technologies for digitization and preservation of cultural material
• Enhancing the visitor experience through data
• Ethical and privacy issues arising from the use of big data in museums

The conference keynote speeches gave a sense of current research and the importance of cultural heritage data management:

• Prof. Erik Champion (Enterprise Fellow, Director, Playful Cultures Lab, Australian Research Centre for Interactive and Virtual Environments (IVE), University of South Australia): Immersive Visualisation and the Emergence of Collaborative XR in the Museum Sector.
• Prof. Panos Constantopoulos (Professor Emeritus in the Department of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Busineess, UNESCO Chair on Digital Methods for the Humanities and Social Sciences): Random thoughts on big data in museums.
• Jill Cousins (Retired Director & CEO of The Hunt Museum; Europeana founder): Why Might a Common Vision Matter for Cultural Data?
• Prof. Laurent d’Orazio (Professor at Univ Rennes, CNRS, IRISA, France): Big Data in museum, a brief history of cloud data management and perspectives.