The Visboeck Curatorbot: Discussing Heritage Collections with Machines

CuratorBot explores the possibilities of conversational agents (chatbots) to engage with cultural heritage collections. As part of an experimental setup, the team behind CuratorBot from the Future Libraries Lab, including members from TU Delft and the National Library of the Netherlands, created a version focused on Het Visboeck, a sixteenth-century manuscript from the library's treasure collections. Here we present some preliminary findings of our studies on how people experienced using a conversational machine-learning tool to interact with the book as well as some of the merits and drawbacks for using this technology in heritage spaces.