Collaborative session notes: https://bit.ly/45uS1zR 

The way that researchers are interacting with collections in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) is changing, and the professionals engaged in the acquisition, description, management, and preservation of cultural memory collections have taken note–a steady increase in research projects, pilot use cases, policy statements, and conference papers over the course of nearly a decade signal a sector-wide change from collections for access to collections for computational reuse. This BoF will showcase a series of projects that use cultural heritage data and leave space for community discussion around issues particular to GLAM professionals and researchers working with cultural heritage collections as data.

There have been a few efforts over the years to launch cross-cutting discussions about cultural heritage materials as data, and to bring the work of memory institutions into closer alignment with evolving best practices for research data, which have failed to find a home within the RDA. Some aspects of this work are covered in several RDA groups focused on the evolving demands of specific professions (e.g. Libraries for Research Data IG) or disciplinary researchers engaging with cultural heritage (e.g. Social Science [& Humanities] Research Data IG). A BoF exploring Cultural Heritage Science Data at the Crossroads in 2019 had ambitious goals of establishing an IG to agree upon a baseline level of data sharing for the field of heritage preservation, while an earlier BoF focused on Images as Data – STEM and heritage science data linked to IIIF in 2018 raised many of the issues that are currently being explored through the Cultural Heritage Case Study in the WorldFAIR Project (2022-2024). Yet there remains no established space within the RDA for a significant field of work that draws on the shared experiences of disciplinary researchers and cultural memory professionals developing, analysing, sharing, and reusing machine actionable library, archive, and museum ‘collections as data.’ 

This meeting aims to bring together a diverse group of cultural memory professionals and disciplinary researchers to present the current state of collections as data work in order to develop a rationale and charter for a Cultural Heritage Data Interest Group within the RDA, and to connect the work of RDA with other networks, conferences, and professional bodies in the GLAM sector developing support for computational use of cultural heritage collections.

Agenda:

1. Introduction to Cultural Heritage Collections as Data (5 min)

   1. Background on WorldFAIR Project Cultural Heritage Case Study and Collections as Data Project (15 min)

2. Short presentations on collections projects and challenges (25 min)

3. Discussion: Developing an IG focused on Cultural Heritage data: What are the issues that this IG could provide space to discuss? (45 min)

   1. How do collections providers make the variety of entry points to data more accessible?

   2. How do memory professionals connect research about collections to the collections themselves, so the ‘data’ and the ‘sources’ aren’t siloed either by workflow or storage location?

   3. Where are the existing connection points for emerging discussions about improving support for types of data use, data formats, and ethical care considerations? 

Collections as Data: Part to Whole

Over a period of three years, the Mellon-funded project Collections as Data: Part to Whole funded and programmatically supported two cohorts comprised of project teams jointly led by librarians and disciplinary scholars. Project teams developed models that support collections as data implementation and holistic reconceptualization of services and roles that support scholarly use. Collections as data produced by project activity exhibit high research value, demonstrate the capacity to serve underrepresented communities, represent a diversity of content types, languages, and descriptive practices, and arise from a range of institutional contexts. The project begins wrapping up with an international summit, Collections as Data: State of the Field and Future Directions, held from April 25-26, 2023 at Internet Archive Canada, which will directly inform the production of a white paper and subsequent initiatives that drive future community work.

WorldFAIR Project

The Digital Repository of Ireland, a CTS-certified repository for arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS) data, has played a leading role in aligning the work of the cultural heritage sector with FAIR (see the DRI’s position statement on FAIR and Open Science). Through the Cultural Heritage Case Study in the WorldFAIR Project, the DRI has produced a mapping report of existing policies and practices that support image sharing across diverse collecting institutions and developed a set of broadly applicable recommendations for shifting these practices into closer alignment with FAIR. Over the next year as project work is ongoing, the DRI will implement the recommendations at the Repository. 

Padilla, Thomas, Hannah Scates Kettler, Yasmeen Shorish, Stewart Varner (2023). Collections as Data – Part to Whole. https://collectionsasdata.github.io/part2whole. 

Knazook, Beth and Joan Murphy (2023). D13.1 Cultural Heritage Mapping Report: Practices and policies supporting Cultural Heritage image sharing platforms, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7659002.

Knazook, Beth et al. (2023). D13.2 Cultural Heritage Image Sharing Recommendations, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7897244.