Conserving Religious Heritage: Measuring, Verifying and Correcting Digital Records at Scale
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65408/cird515994Keywords:
Religious Heritage, Digital Documentation, Data Quality, Image Provenance, Large Language Models, Heritage Information SystemAbstract
Digital documentation has become central to the conservation, discovery and interpretation of religious heritage, but large online heritage records are vulnerable to copied errors, incorrect classifications, misplaced coordinates, uncertain image provenance and machine-generated inaccuracies. This paper presents an editorial-informatics method developed by Cultural Heritage Online for maintaining a large, publicly accessible record of religious heritage. The method combines independent source verification, coordinate checking, image-provenance recovery, controlled use of language models, routine measurement and sample-based editorial reading. Applied to approximately 3,400 religious records, it identified misdated histories, 124 unsupported UNESCO classifications, duplicate records, misplaced sites and incorrectly matched images. The study also shows that 56% of the religious records still relied principally on Wikipedia/Wikidata and 1,331 lacked a religious function classification. The findings demonstrate that automation and summary statistics alone cannot ensure trustworthy heritage information. Informatics-based conservation therefore requires provenance, independent verification, classification checks and continuous human reading as integral components of digital heritage management.
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