{"id":417,"date":"2023-03-01T19:12:29","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T19:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-digitalscholarship-library-cornell-edu.pantheonsite.io\/?p=417"},"modified":"2026-02-17T18:26:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:26:26","slug":"cad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/?p=417","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to Collections as Data"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What is Collections As Data?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Collections as data is the idea and practice of using&nbsp;<strong>collections<\/strong>&nbsp;(a group of objects, items, texts, etc., typically digital or digitized)&nbsp;<strong>as data<\/strong>&nbsp;that can be analysed, represented, etc. by people using computers. The term came into common use in the digital humanities field with the collaborative project <a href=\"https:\/\/collectionsasdata.github.io\">Always Already Computational: Collection As Data<\/a>, directed by Thomas Padilla, that &#8220;documented, iterated on, and shared current and potential approaches to developing cultural heritage collections that support computationally-driven research and teaching.&#8221; This project was followed by a report on the responsible implementation of collections as data practices, <a href=\"https:\/\/collectionsasdata.github.io\/part2whole\/\">Collections as Data: Part to Whole<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Collections<\/strong> are groups of objects, items, texts, things, etc. <strong>As<\/strong> in this term really means &#8220;is&#8221;; the collections (and their metadata) are serving as data, becoming data, being considered as data. <strong>Data<\/strong> are groups of ordered information stored digitally, that are capable of being processed by a computer. So, in sum, collections as data means groups of objects being formatted as groups of ordered information, that are then analysed by a computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Collection as data work thus explores the potential of using computational methods to analyse digital collections, digital objects, and their metadata, using digitised and born-digital collections and their metadata as datasets to perform computational analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What does collections as data work look like?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Digital collections and exhibits<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Interactive maps and visualizations<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Digital databases<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Scholarly websites and web archives<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Processing, presenting, and interpreting metadata from collections<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Computational text analysis<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Computational image comparison and analysis<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Much, much, more!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What can collections as data entail?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Public humanities work<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Creation of datasets that serve a known user need<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Collaboratively sharing and documenting processes and practices beyond one\u2019s institution<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Openly publishing datasets and associated documentation<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Encouraging computational use of digitised and born-digital collections<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lowering barriers to use\/access<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Enabling bulk download of data and optimising data access<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Prioritising static directories and zipped collections<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Direct contact with communities<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Being guided by ongoing ethical commitments<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Aiming to respect the rights and needs of content creators, collections subjects, and user communities (including crowdsourcing, when appropriate)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Valuing interoperability<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ongoing, iterative processes<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Much, much, more!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Have questions or interested in exploring a collections as data project? Reach out to Kiran Mohammadi-Williams at <a href=\"mailto:kam535@cornell.edu\">kam535@cornell.edu<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>References:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is Collections As Data? Collections as data is the idea and practice of using&nbsp;collections&nbsp;(a group of objects, items, texts, etc., typically digital or digitized)&nbsp;as data&nbsp;that can be analysed, represented, etc. by people using computers. The term came into common use in the digital humanities field with the collaborative project Always Already Computational: Collection As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collections-as-data"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2432,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions\/2432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}