Digital humanities: A review study of digital archives for sustainability and health equity
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Abstract
This review article examines the transformative role of Digital Humanities (DH) in advancing sustainability and health equity through digital archives. While digital archives have traditionally served as cultural heritage repositories, this study demonstrates their strategic potential as critical infrastructures for addressing complex global challenges. The analysis reveals how DH principles fundamentally reshape archival practice, with ethical metadata transformation—using artificial intelligence, controlled vocabularies, and community-led methods—emerging as a powerful mechanism for redressing historical bias and enabling more accurate representation of marginalized groups. Key findings from the synthesis of 29 studies show inclusivity as the predominant principle, followed by accessibility (19 studies) and community engagement (15 studies). The evidence indicates that participatory design approaches yield culturally sensitive, multilingual interfaces that better serve underrepresented populations, while innovative taxonomy development and open-source platforms advance decolonizing archival practices. However, significant implementation challenges persist, including the digital divide, ethical concerns regarding data sovereignty, and constraints from legacy systems and limited resources. The review concludes that intentional application of DH methodologies to archival design substantially enhances digital archives' capacity to support both cultural sustainability and rigorous investigation into the structural dimensions of health equity, though more collaborative approaches are needed to fully realize this potential
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