From July 4 to 7, 2019, Dunhuang (DH2019) International Symposium on the Digitalization of Cultural Heritage & the Annual Conference of Specialized Committee for Digital Humanities of the China Society for Social Science was held at the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, a world cultural heritage site. DH2019 was hosted by Dunhuang Academy and Specialized Committee for Digital Humanities of the China Society for Social Science, jointly organized by Department of Humanities at Dunhuang Academy, Center for Studies of Information Resources at Wuhan University, School of Information Management at Wuhan University, School of Information Resource Management at Renmin University of China, Shanghai Library Historical Humanities and Big Data Center, and Tongfang Zhiwang (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd.

The chairman ofDH2019was jointly served by Researcher Shengliang Zhao, director ofDunhuang Academyand Professor Qing Fang, Dean of School of Information Management at Wuhan University. Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, including Xinping Zhou, Directorof East Asian Library atUniversity of California, Berkeley,Xiaoguang Wang, Deputy Director ofWuhan University Information Resources Research Center,Bin Zhang, Dean of School of Information Resource Management at Renmin University ofChina, Wei Liu, Deputy Librarian of Shanghai Library, Hongwei Zhang, Executive Deputy General Manager ofTongfang Zhiwang (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd.The conference attracted nearly 250 digital humanities experts and scholars from domestic and foreign academic institutions to participate in the discussion and share the latest theories, technologies and project achievements in the field of digital humanities.

The opening ceremony of the conference was held on the morning of July 5, and was chaired by Shengping Xia, Deputy Director of the Information Center of Dunhuang Academy.Researcher Shengliang Zhao, Director ofDunhuang Academy,and Rosal Jordan, the head of the Education and Research Sub-committee of the UNESCO Memory of the World Project, delivered speeches at the opening ceremony and expressed their confidence and vision for the vigorous development of digital humanities research. On the afternoon of July 6, ProfessorXiaoguang Wang, Deputy Director ofWuhan University Information Resources Research Center, presided over the closing ceremony.Xinping Zhou, Directorof East Asian Library atUniversity of California, Berkeley,Xuemao Wang, Dean and University Librarian at University of Cincinnati Libraries, Professor Huiling Feng, former Vice President of Renmin University of China, Professor Lei Zeng, Kent State University, Simon Mahony, Director of the University College London (UCL) Centre for Digital Humanities, Kristian Jensen,Head of Arts and Humanities at the British Library, Wei Liu, Deputy Librarian of Shanghai Library, Hua Nie, Deputy Librarian at Peking University Library made concluding speech respectively at the conference. They all highly affirmed the contribution to digital humanities research and the digitization of cultural heritage of this conference.

Photos of the conference and Professor Xiaoguang Wang, Deputy Director of Wuhan University Information Resources Research Center, presides over the closing ceremony.

This conference lasted for two days, focusing on eight subjects, such as the digital theory, methods and techniques of cultural heritage, information organization and knowledge organization for digital humanities, digital humanities research based on cultural heritage digital resources, humanities and social science data construction and management, cultural heritage knowledge map construction and application, related data release in the field of cultural heritage,semantic representation of cultural heritage big data, semantic enhancement, data model and open access and long-term preservation of cultural heritage digital resources, and etc. There were 39 reports held during the conference including two special sessions on cultural heritage digitization and digital humanities research. Professor Dan Wu, Professor Rongying Zhao, Associate Professor Liang Hong, and some postgraduate and PhD students participated in this conference.

Group photo of participants of Dunhuang (DH2019) International Symposium on the Digitalization of Cultural Heritage & the Annual Conference of Specialized Committee for Digital Humanities of the China Society for Social Science.

On July 7, in order to understand the basic process of digitalization of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, and the charm of “Digital Dunhuang”, participating experts visited and inspected the digital collection and image processing scene of Mogao Grottoes and listened to the experts' introduction at Dunhuang Information Center. The participants expressed that the conference was organized in a fine, rich content and cutting-edge theme, which comprehensively demonstrated the latest developments in China's digital humanities research and was a successful conference.

This conference was the first academic annual meeting after the establishment of the Specialized Committee for Digital Humanities of the China Society for Social Science.

About theBackground and the Conference Chair:

Specialized Committee for Digital Humanities of the China Society for Social Sciencewas established on May 25, 2018. The secretariat is located at Wuhan University. The director is Professor Qing Fang, Dean of the School of Information Management of Wuhan University. The deputy director is Professor Xiaoguang Wang, Director of Wuhan University Information Resources Research Center. The members of the committee are from many universities and research institutions in China.

Center for Digital Humanities, Wuhan Universityis the first digital humanities research center in mainland China founded in 2011. As an interdisciplinary research platform, it is dedicated to exploring innovative application paths and methods of digital information technology in the production, dissemination and teaching of humanities, and data-driven humanities and social science research paradigm innovation. The members come from a number of academic institutions, and have rich scientific research experience in digital asset management, document information organization, cultural heritage ontology design, cultural relics 3D modeling, image deep learning, humanities academic user behavior analysis, and etc., and have undertaken many important scientific research projects.