Over the course of our two-year project, members of the project team often heard a question along the lines of: “We’ve read the Santa Barbara Statement, the Facets, the Personas. We’re subscribed to the google group. But where do we start? How do we move collections as data forward at our own institution?”

50 Things (pdf, csv, a randomizer) is aimed at helping to address that where to start question. It is intended to open eyes, stimulate conversation, encourage stepping back, generate ideas, and surface new possibilities.

The project team has collected and refined this list of 50 Things over dozens of engagements. Participants at our second National Forum provided the main initial corpus, when they generously responded to a series of questions, including: “Within the next 1-6 months, what can you do within your own workplace to realistically and relatively easily improve/ move forward collections as data work?”

We hope 50 Things provides an impetus for exploring, learning from your colleagues, deepening your knowledge and understanding, and taking that first step.

Over the course of two years working on Always Already Computational: Collections as Data, the team has heard repeated requests from people who work in libraries, archives, and museums for help understanding what it is people want to do with their collections. Generally, of course, we all want to see our collections get used, and we want to help make them available for new uses, but beyond reading or looking at them, what do people want to do with them “as data”?

In order to help answer that question, we are launching a new series aimed at profiling common methods used in the computational analysis of collections. The goal is to have a group of “Methods Profiles” that people can begin with as they have conversations with their colleagues and communities. These profiles will be short, and aim to help people who work in libraries, archives, and museums get a sense of methods people might like to use to engage their collections computationally. Each profile gives a brief overview of a method. They are designed to be used in combination with the principles in the Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data.

Laurie Allen will serve as editor for the first round of profiles, and we are looking for volunteers to create draft profiles. If you’re willing to volunteer to create a profile, or you’d like to recommend that Laurie try to recruit someone to volunteer to create a methods profile, please email Laurie Allen (laallen@upenn.edu).

Completed Profiles

Text Mining

• Laurie Allen and Scott Enderle, University of Pennsylvania

Network Analysis (pending review)

• Scott Weingart, Carnegie Mellon, Thomas Padilla, UNLV

Needed Profiles

Mapping (assigned)

Image Analysis (needs volunteers)

Audio Analysis (needs volunteers)

Collation (needs volunteers)

Visualization (needs volunteers)

Your idea here (needs volunteers!)

A note about drafting these profiles - The first profile was created by Laurie Allen (a librarian with a deep understanding of libraries and a broad understanding of text mining) with massive help from Scott Enderle (a scholar with a deep understanding of text mining and a broad understanding of libraries). It is hard for someone with deep knowledge of the methods to generalize about it (though Scott is particularly awesome at that) and it is hard for someone without deep knowledge to know what the sticking points are that libraries should look out for.

We encourage profiles to be co-authored in this way, so that they reflect the combined expertise of disciplinary and library colleagues.

Always Already Computational: Collections as Data is drawing to a close!

If you’ve used anything from the project we’d love to hear about it. Have you used the Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data? The personas? The facets? Has the project helped support any actions in your local, regional, or larger professional context? For example, a change in workflows, an influence on strategic directions, contributing to external funding effort, development of workshops, (re)defining roles and responsibilities?

Any and all responses are welcome.

Survey here.

Many thanks,

Thomas Padilla, University of Nevada Las Vegas

Laurie Allen, University of Pennsylvania

Stewart Varner, University of Pennsylvania

Sarah Potvin, Texas A&M University

Elizabeth Russey Roke, Emory University

Hannah Frost, Stanford University

Collections as Data: Part to Whole is pleased to share the cohort 1 call for proposals.

Collections as Data: Part to Whole will fund and programmatically support two collections as data cohorts. Cohorts will be comprised of project teams jointly led by librarians and disciplinary scholars. This effort is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

We look forward to working with you and welcome any questions that you might have as you consider putting a proposal forward. Feel free to contact us individually or collectively using this form.

Thomas Padilla (University of Nevada Las Vegas)

Hannah Scates Kettler (University of Iowa)

Laurie Allen (University of Pennsylvania)

Stewart Varner (University of Pennsylvania)

Code of Conduct

All project activity, both in person and online, aims to foster a welcoming and inclusive experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, nationality, or political beliefs. Harassment of participants will not be tolerated in any form. Harassment includes any behavior that participants find intimidating, hostile or offensive. Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately. Please contact any member of the project team if you have concerns.

Thomas Padilla, Visiting Digital Research Services Librarian at the University of Nevada Las Vegas will lead Collections as Data: Part to Whole, a three-year national collections as data effort. Thomas is joined by Co-Principal Investigator Hannah Scates Kettler, from the University of Iowa, Laurie Allen, from the University of Pennsylvania, and Stewart Varner, from the University of Pennsylvania. The effort is supported by a $750,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

“We are grateful to The Mellon Foundation for supporting this national collections as data effort,” said Maggie Farrell, Dean of the UNLV University Libraries. “This project will provide opportunities for institutions across the country to work together in this space for the benefit of our profession and research as a whole.”

Collections as Data: Part to Whole brings the question of how to implement cultural heritage collections as data together with the question of how to develop roles and services that optimally support their scholarly use.

“Data-driven scholarship and pedagogy increases the need for libraries, archives, and museums to develop and provide access to collections that are amenable to computational use,” said Padilla. “As we create more collections in this vein we must contend with the challenge of holistically supporting their use. This project will support a diverse set of partners as they explore these challenges together.”

Collections as Data: Part to Whole builds on the work of the Institute of Museum and Library Services-supported Always Already Computational: Collections as Data, a project initiated by several members of this effort in addition to Sarah Potvin, Texas A&M University; Hannah Frost, Stanford University; and Elizabeth Russey Roke, Emory University. Collections as Data: Part to Whole will be guided by an advisory group that includes Dan Cohen, Northeastern University; Greg Eow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries; Karen Estlund, Penn State University; Trevor Munoz, University of Maryland College Park; Barbara Rockenbach, Columbia University; and Erin O’Meara, Artefactual Systems.

During the three-year project, Collections as Data: Part to Whole will facilitate the development of two cohorts. Cohort teams will receive funding to pursue collections as data projects. These teams will create new collections as data, develop collections as data implementation plans, and develop role and service plans that support collections as data use.

“In selecting institutions to participate in the regranting program, we will place emphasis on proposals that evidence holistic organizational approaches to supporting collections as data use. Competitive proposals will simultaneously evidence intention to create collections as data that have high research value and the capacity to bring underrepresented histories to light,” said Padilla.

A call for proposals will be released this August for the first of two cohorts.

Collections as Data: Part to Whole marks the first Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded program in the State of Nevada.

Thomas Padilla (University of Nevada Las Vegas)

Always Already Computational at Open Repositories 2018: Report from Bozeman, Montana

The annual international Open Repositories conference offered an opportunity to hone in on the technical infrastructure and user-centered design behind collections as data efforts. On June 6, 2018 Always Already Computational: Collections as Data project team members Hannah Frost (Stanford University) and Sarah Potvin (Texas A&M University) convened a panel that featured collections as data work from MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. This set of featured projects included homegrown applications and evaluation and use of some of the most popular open source repository platforms: DSpace, Samvera/Fedora, and Islandora.

Panelists Helen Bailey (MIT), Kate Lynch (UPenn), and Mark Jordan (Simon Fraser) addressed the following question:

How do today’s open source repository systems support or inhibit working with collections as data?

For the full experience watch a recording of the panel and reference panelist slides.

livestream recording

Hannah Frost opened the panel by introducing the concept of collections as data, providing an update on the Always Already Computational project, and acknowledging complementary efforts such as the Library of Congress Collections as Data meetings and COAR’s Next Generation Repositories report (2017).

Helen Bailey spoke about the evolution of MIT’s attempts to provide API access to their collection of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), which were published in DSpace@MIT. She described the group’s tests of Fedora 4 in their initial work, and their development of Backrest, a backport to enable API REST access to their older version of DSpace. Bailey concluded by previewing ongoing work to support MIT’s API-first approach to service engineering. For more on MIT’s Text and Data Mining project for ETDs, see Richard Rodgers’s Collections as Data Facet and view Bailey’s presentation to our 2018 Forum.

Mark Jordan offered three examples of collections as data implementations. The first two - Simon Fraser’s “Fetch Collections” tool and The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics’ Language Archive implementation - use Islandora, and are not yet in production. The third - the University of British Columbia’s Open Collections project - is a bespoke interface that unifies digital collections managed in several repositories. The Max Planck Institute example serves a targeted need: users seeking to train software, typically in speech and speaker recognition, using the Institute’s collection of researcher data, which includes audio and video language corpus data representing languages from around the world. Users are able to select collections in Islandora and request a zip file, which is generated using an Islandora ZIP Download module developed by Discovery Garden. Simon Fraser’s “Fetch Collections” tool is designed to be downloaded by users to run functions locally on Islandora collections. The University of British Columbia’s Open Collections project delivers digital objects and metadata in a variety of forms and formats. This fully-fledged collections as data implementation packages API access with documentation and tools for building queries to run across output.

Kate Lynch rounded out the panel by detailing and demoing an ongoing project at the University of Pennsylvania to bring the OPenn collections as data implementation into a repository. The OPenn open access manuscript collection, currently housed in a locally-developed, standalone application that provisions multiple modes of access, will be replicated in Colenda, Penn Libraries’ Samvera-based repository. The Libraries will integrate storage, delivery, and preservation across the two applications. Colenda’s emphasis on long-term preservation and version tracking will provide enhancements such as persistent opaque identifiers and IIIF protocol implementation. (For more on the OPenn project, see Dot Porter’s Collections as Data Facet and view Porter’s presentation to our 2018 Forum.)

The five cases detailed by Bailey, Jordan, and Lynch offered insight into how repositories are being adapted and extended to provision access to collections as data beyond OAI-PMH or APIs, how libraries are integrating collections as data as a core service, and the support needed to scaffold this access.

We hope that Open Repositories will continue to host fruitful exchanges about collections as data, and to frame community-supported work to make repository platforms more conducive to delivering collections as data.

Sarah Potvin

Hannah Frost

On May 7-8, 2018 a group of librarians, archivists, researchers, and technologists gathered at the University of Nevada Las Vegas for a second Always Already Computational: Collections as Data national forum. The goals of the forum were twofold: (1) to provide a public program showcasing the opportunities and questions that emerge in the creation, management, and use of collections as data; and (2) to draw on the collective expertise and wisdom of the invited participants in order to “reality check” the project’s direction and in-progress deliverables.

Public Program

The forum opened with eleven presentations by forum participants active in collections as data. Several of these projects have been published as Collections as Data Facets. The panels were livestreamed to a public audience. The panel line-up and prompts can be found here.

The livestream recording is available below.

At the risk of oversimplifying, we want to share out a brief summary of the proceedings, beginning with a taste of these exceptional presentations.

The first panel addressed the populations and people behind collections as data efforts, responding to the question: “Who are collections as data for?” Encouraging libraries to move towards designing collections as data to serve “anyone” rather than “everyone,” Shawn Averkamp detailed the design decisions that shape large-scale aggregation of collections and collection-data at the New York Public Library. Dot Porter recounted how OPENN transformed her role as a curator. Bergis Jules shared ideas coming out of the Documenting the Now project to work with and for the individuals implicated in social media data collections.

In the second panel, speakers delved into collections as data potential and motivations. Micki Kaufman took us into a 3D representation of an archival corpus on Henry Kissinger, where it becomes possible to use color and depth perception to interpret and understand relationships amongst historic events on a timeline. Inna Kouper explored how we might gain insight into the coverage of history and culture within a mega corpus like HathiTrust digital library. Greg Cram spoke about a multi-year New York Public Library project to digitize Copyright Office records, an effort capable of informing rights status and access possibilities with other collections as data. Reflecting on Data Refuge and various humanities projects, Laurie Allen asserted that collections as data forces us to ask a different set of questions than we usually do, to consider different ways of focusing resources on collections and to reconsider what we need from collection platforms.

The third panel tackled the “how” of collections as data, emphasizing stories of collections as data implementation. On Panel 3, Meghan Ferriter shared a status update for LC Labs, how they are prototyping the creation of transformative experiences using the Library of Congresses’ APIs with a diversity of users, including internal staff. Mary Elings described how the Bancroft Library is making strides to create “research-ready” data. Helen Bailey relayed the lessons learned by MIT Libraries, including the critical work of maintaining a current understanding of user needs, and plans to explore machine learning. Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati discussed strategies at Vanderbilt to address sustainability, audience engagement, and defining librarianship as data consultancy.

And that was all before lunch on the first day!

Reality Check

We were openly seeking input to strengthen and refine the project’s outcomes and the group of experts assembled in Las Vegas generously engaged in the process.

After lunch, we all oriented ourselves to small group exercises designed to test the project’s personas and an early draft of the project’s summative work, a guide to “making” collections as data. While the feedback on our progress was overall very positive, the first exercise surfaced loads of useful insight from the groups on how to make it better - just as we had hoped. For example, the faculty/researchers in the room reminded us of their priorities – research output/creativity and technical skill acquisition come first, before peer review acceptability and classroom use – and encouraged us to maintain an orientation around the use cases and associated research methodologies. We also received helpful suggestions on making it easier for readers to find relevant entry points to our material and then navigate across it.

In a second exercise on Day 1, we learned from the groups what they perceive to be high value actions that institutions can take to facilitate collections as data work, and whether these actions are resource intensive. Rising to the top is the need to display explicit, unambiguous, clearly defined licenses for using and citing the data as well as to provide documentation on the origins of the data and its processing documentation. Interestingly, much of the discussion centered on policy work and rights review processes rather than technological limitations for collections as data, pointing to larger access issues for digital library resources in general that remain unaddressed.

At the close of Day 1, it was clear that the group was stimulated and fully primed to dive deeper into collections as data.

Closing Out

Day 2 of the forum was devoted to thinking about future directions for collections as data. Like the conclusion of a meeting when everyone restates their assignments and “action items” the group produced to-do lists for themselves and others through a series of three activities. These lists will be released moving forward.

The activities were designed to collect a wide range of thoughts on three questions:

What advice would you give to workers at an institution that is getting ready to start collections as data work to help them get some easy wins in the short term?

Within the next 1-6 months, what can you do within your own workplace to realistically and relatively easily improve / move forward collections as data work?

Within 5-10 years, what steps could be taken that will position institutions to deeply support collections as data work at scale and across the organization?

All three activities followed a common process. Forum participants were given the question and asked to think about it for five minutes. Next, participants were asked to pair up and share their thoughts and refine them for ten minutes. Finally, each pair combined with another to continue refining thoughts and add them to a Google Doc. The result is a really valuable and practical collection or ideas for information professionals in a wide variety of contexts.

For institutions that are just getting started with collections as data, the participants suggested building a network inside and outside the library/archive who can help plan and support collections as data work. They also suggest doing some research (perhaps starting with the collections as data zotero library), conducting audits of local collections, and doing an environmental scan of peer institutions.

In the short term, forum participants said they wanted to focus on taking stock and spreading the word. Common suggestions were to look for low hanging fruit such as collections that can easily be OCR’d and those with very open licences. In order to spread the word, forum participants suggested highlighting collections as data friendly collections online and through social media and hosting workshops for colleagues as well as users.

Predictably, forum participants targeted more complex issues for the long term. Staffing issues were particularly on the minds of people as they considered both new kinds of positions as well as professional development for existing staff. They also recommended spending time nurturing relationships both with local users who are particularly interested in computationally intensive research as well as regional and national partner institutions who are also working on collections as data.

One important theme that was present across all three activities was not so much an action item as it was a suggestion for a shift in mindset. One participant framed it well when they wrote about the need to “socialize collections as data as something that can be done and supported by units and staff across the library.” In other words, “de-silo it.”

To close out, we would like to express our thanks. Thank you to the forum participants - we appreciate the time you took to share your experience with the project and the broader community. Thank you to the Institute of Museum and Library Services for your support. Finally, thank you to the University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries for hosting the forum - special thanks to Amy Gros-Louis, Lonnie Marshall, and Kee Choi for everything they did to make the forum a success.

Hannah Frost

Stewart Varner

Sarah Potvin

From May 7-8, the University of Nevada Las Vegas will hold a second Collections as Data national forum. During the forum a group of librarians, technologists, archivists, and disciplinary researchers will gather to share their work with collections as data, reality test project deliverables, and help frame future directions for collections as data work writ large.

May 7 features a livestreamed portion from 9 - 1 PST. The program includes a Collections as Data project update and a series of panels that address multiple dimensions of collections as data - who collections as data are for, the potential of collections as data, and paths toward making the work viable in local contexts. A high level agenda is now available. Collections as Data panel prompts are available below.

Panel 1 - Dot Porter (University of Pennsylvania), Shawn Averkamp (NYPL), Bergis Jules (UC Riverside)

Who are collections as data for? The forthcoming version of the Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data will assert that “Collections as data designed for everyone serve no one.” How has your work with collections as data been forged around specific people, whether those represented in the collections, built into the design of the dataset, or reflected in your own teaching and/or learning? What work have you done to match collections as data with populations?

Panel 2 - Micki Kaufman (CUNY), Inna Kouper (Indiana), Greg Cram (NYPL), Laurie Allen (University of Pennsylvania)

What is the coolest thing about your collections as data work? Tell us why you became involved with this work and what motivates your continued dedication or interest. We’d like to show our attendees the spirit and possibilities of collections as data work.

Panel 3 - Meghan Ferriter (Library of Congress), Mary Elings (UC Berkeley), Helen Bailey (MIT), Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati (Vanderbilt)

Viewers of our livestream are likely interested in how they might participate in or grow collections as data. How have you started, shifted, or institutionalized collections as data? How do you see this work aligning with your institutional/organizational mission? What surprised you about the process, and what do you plan or hope to do next?

If you have questions for the project team or the panelists that you would like us to consider during the forum, please share via this form or open annotation on this page.

Thomas Padilla (University of Nevada Las Vegas)

Laurie Allen (University of Pennsylvania)

Stewart Varner (University of Pennsylvania)

Sarah Potvin (Texas A&M University)

Elizabeth Russey Roke (Emory University)

Hannah Frost (Stanford University)

The Collections as Data team is pleased to share a guest post by John Russell and Allyssa Bruce. In October 2017, John taught Humanities Librarianship in a Digital Age for Library Juice Academy. The second week of the course focused on The Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data, asking the students to reflect on what it means to think about humanities collections as data (or sources of data) and to respond to the statement generally. Allyssa was one of the students in the course and she noted a connection between the statement’s principles and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The following post is an initial attempt by John and Allyssa to think through the connections between information literacy and collections as data.

Collections as Data & Information Literacy

John Russell (Penn State University) and Allyssa Bruce (Kansas State University)

The Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data proposes a set of principles aimed at cultural heritage institutions building digital collections. A number of the principles encourage us to expand how we think of collection access by suggesting inclusion of instructional material and documentation that “helps others find a path to doing the work” (principle 6). That the Santa Barbara Statement makes such a close connection between the collection and instruction aspects of librarianship is an exciting development and something worth exploring more. As we engaged with these principles, we came to appreciate that they speak to information literacy efforts and intersect with the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. While we believe that it is generative and beneficial to read the entirety of the Santa Barbara Statement through the ACRL Framework and vice versa, in this space we will just tease out how to think through one frame, Authority is Constructed and Contextual, in terms of the Statement’s principles.

One of the core tenets of Collections as Data is ethics. Our collections are one way in which cultural heritage institutions express relationships with information creators and information users. What we choose to include in our collections and how we choose to describe those materials lends institutional authority to particular perspectives, reinforcing the status of some creators and users over others. The Santa Barbara Statement frequently appeals to the ethical commitments we have to our users, advocating for community-driven development and access (principle 5), respecting the rights and needs of creators and users, and greater transparency about inequities inherent in our collections, how they are described, and how they can be accessed (principle 3). These principles ask institutions to pay attention to who collections are developed for, whose perspectives are represented, and who is able to access collections. By centering ethics, the Santa Barbara Statement encourages greater openness about our digital collections and foregrounds concerns about authority.

The Santa Barbara Statement calls for a rethinking of data documentation, turning our README files and codebooks into sites where provenance, ethics, and, we contend, information literacy can intersect (principles 3, 4, and 6). When we make our ethical commitments visible through documentation, we are allowing users to better assess both how authority can be constructed as well as how these collections obscure or incorporate other viewpoints and voices. Our more ethical collection documentation is also an instructional tool and we should see documentation as another opportunity for living out our professional commitments to information literacy. In fact, taking these principles seriously illuminates a path for pedagogy that frames our digital collections as something with which students can critically engage by assessing strengths and gaps, especially in terms of missing narratives. Additionally, documentation and the pedagogical approach that follows can help more novice users unpack different forms of authority and their inherent limitations.

Central to the ethical core of the Santa Barbara Statement and the “Authority is Constructed” frame is understanding the situation in which information is created and in which it will be used. Both support the view that information is embedded in social contexts; this acknowledgement empowers critical evaluation of the information resources that we include in our collections. The statement explicitly warns about, “what is hidden or missing in the histories [collections] are perceived to represent”, and asks that institutions, “be mindful of these absences and plan to work against their repetition” (paragraph 4). This call for contextual awareness about digital collections provides a natural entry point for students and librarians to explore information literacy as outlined in the ACRL Framework. The Santa Barbara Statement principles provide a frame for students to evaluate collections and use their own developing disciplinary expertise to engage with the ethical realities of library collections and the ways in which those collections manifest authority.

Seeing principled collection documentation as instructional also helps clarify the ways our collections can connect with our instruction program. Knowledge of the Santa Barbara Statement principles can help with instruction based on digital collections, creating a baseline that can be used to assess digital sources. First, students can use the principles as a way to evaluate collections and work through questions such as:

• Whose voices/perspectives are most prevalent in the collection?
• Whose voices/perspectives are missing (that are relevant to the subject matter)?
• Who can access these collections and why?

As students advance in expertise, they can build on these initial questions and begin thinking about how to amplify certain perspectives or otherwise try to imagine what kinds of sources would help complete (or make more ethical) the collection in question; they can also consider how these factors inform the creation of research questions. More advanced engagement could involve having students formally work with institutional collections to identify sources and create ethical and principled data collections.

The Santa Barbara Statement presents principles that are centered on the ethical responsibility cultural heritage institutions have in contextualizing their data collections. When collections are accompanied with documentation that provides information describing provenance, ethical issues, data collection methods, and instructional material, cultural heritage institutions directly address issues of authority by ensuring that users can understand data collection contexts. Additionally, this documentation supports students learning information literacy by helping them to consider what perspectives are present, whose are missing, how access is connected to privilege, and what the answers to these questions imply.

Collections as Data (CAD) Personas represent an initial set of high level role types associated with collections as data activity. While distinctions are fuzzy in the context of disciplinary and professional praxis, roles represented by personas can generally be understood in alignment with data stewardship or use. On the whole, personas aim to surface needs, motivations, and goals in context. These representations are derived from Collections as Data project engagements and project team experience.

In Agile software development, a persona is used to help develop a broadly shared orientation to user experience. Gary Geisler has written, “Personas offer a way to summarize findings from user research and help determine user requirements and priorities. These documents help project teams develop a common understanding of a project’s intended audience and priorities. They also serve as a useful reference for design decisions throughout the development process.”

The Agile notion of a persona need not be limited to supporting software or system design. After all, collections as data work depends upon institutional services and people who do not fit easily within that scope. Development of personas provides but another resource for expanding our understanding of CAD oriented work in contemporary cultural heritage settings.

Resources

Collections as Data Personas

The project team is particularily grateful to the following people for their input which informed the creation of these personas: Bob Gradeck, Cheryl Phillips, Denice Ross, Mary Souther, Rebecca Sutton Koeser, and all the participants of the Collections as Data workshop at DLF Forum 2017.

Call for Submissions

We welcome submission of additional personas derived from your context and community needs. Contributions from a range of sources are encouraged, e.g. libraries, museums, archives, research centers, academic departments, institutionally unaffiliated parties, and more.

Submissions should follow the persona template.

Submit personas to Hannah Frost - hfrost@stanford.edu