Collections, Data, and Interpretation

Exploring the Life Cycle of Digital Objects

Sharon M. Leon | @sharonmleon

Best Practices Exchange | April 30, 2019

Scholar in the Archive

http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/

Research Practices of Historians

"In numerous cases, interviewees demonstrated their organization processes by showing the physical and digital “piles” of sources that made up a chapter. Many scholars had stacks of index cards, paper notes, and print-outs of sources organized by chapter. In one case, an interviewee showed the file boxes (representing chapters) with tabs (representing sections) containing individual index cards (representing notes or ideas) by which a book is being organized; another shared the bookshelf on which he kept his last book, with each chapter’s sources sorted neatly into piles and labeled."

Schonfeld and Rutner, ITHAKA S+R, 2012

https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/supporting-the-changing-research-practices-of-historians/

Notecards

Research Tools

Secondary Research

Primary Research

Heuristics of Historical Thinking

Sourcing
Contextualizing
Close reading
Using background knowledge
Corroborating
Reading for silences

Sam Wineburg, “Thinking Like a Historian,” http://www.loc.gov/teachers/tps/quarterly/historical_thinking/article.html

https://americanantiquarian.org/NatTurner/

Digital Collection

Encounters

http://braceroarchive.org

http://wearinggayhistory.com/

https://dp.la

https://artsandculture.google.com/color?col=GREEN

http://dsl.richmond.edu/emancipation/

Data is fuel for discovery

https://collectionsasdata.github.io/statement/

Principles, Part I

Collections as data development aims to encourage computational use of digitized and born digital collections.
Collections as data stewards are guided by ongoing ethical commitments.
Collections as data stewards aim to lower barriers to use.
Collections as data designed for everyone serve no one.
Shared documentation helps others find a path to doing the work.

Principles, Part II

Collections as data should be made openly accessible by default, except in cases where ethical or legal obligations preclude it.
Collections as data development values interoperability.
Collections as data stewards work transparently in order to develop trustworthy, long-lived collections.
Data as well as the data that describe those data are considered in scope.
The development of collections as data is an ongoing process and does not necessarily conclude with a final version.