CFP: Special Issue on Reimagining GLAM Collections with Large Language Models and Generative AI
Galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) are increasingly experimenting with Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative AI to support collection work, discovery, interpretation, and public engagement. From metadata enrichment and data quality improvement to conversational archives and multimodal analysis, generative AI is opening new possibilities—and raising important questions—across GLAM contexts.
This Information Matters special issue, Reimagining GLAM Collections with Large Language Models and Generative AI, invites short, accessible contributions that reflect on how these technologies are being used in practice. We welcome perspectives from practitioners, researchers, educators, students, and community partners who are experimenting with, critiquing, or rethinking generative AI in cultural heritage and information institutions.
Rather than focusing on technical detail, this special issue emphasizes lived experience, reflective practice, and human-centered approaches to AI adoption.
We welcome contributions on topics such as:
- Generative AI-assisted cataloging, description, and metadata enrichment
- Data quality checking and improvement for GLAM collections using LLMs
- Exploratory search, sense-making, and discovery across collections
- Multimodal analysis of text, images, audio, video, and born-digital materials using multimodal LLMs
- Conversational archives, generative discovery tools, and narrative exhibitions
- Language access, multilingual discovery, and culturally diverse representation
- Ethics, bias, transparency, and governance in generative AI applications for GLAM collections
- Labor, professional identity, and AI literacy in GLAM work
- Community participation, co-creation, and community-grounded AI projects
Author Instructions
All proposals should be submitted directly to the Information Matters platform following the author instructions. Authors are also encouraged to provide illustrations to accompany texts. When submitting your article, make sure to select “SI “LLMs for GLAM” as a tag to be considered for this Special Issue.
Pay special attention that in this special issue we are not seeking conventional scholarly papers but short texts (500 to 1000 words) accessible for the general audience. Work that is previously published elsewhere will be considered as long as it is rewritten in the format applicable to Information Matters. The texts will be published in parallel through SSRN in a citable format with a DOI, volume and issue and are indexed in a series of publication databases.
- CFP release: Februay 9, 2026
- Submission deadline: April 30, 2026
- Full issue published: May 2026
- Decisions and publication through IM website: Typically, within two weeks of submission.
- Publication of the special issue and indexing through SSRN: May/June 2026
Questions: For queries about the special issue, please contact one of the editors (email addresses below).
Guest Editors
Dr. Haihua Chen, University of North Texas
Dr. Jiangping Chen, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
