Session 4 Thursday 16:00 - 17:30 High Tor 2 Chair: Isabella Magni
Digital Humanities and the Library: Research Partners? Bingjun Liu , Yaming Fu , Simon Mahony Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai Keywords: digital humanities, academic libraries, research partnerships This talk presents results from our recent research analysing the relationship between digital humanities and the research library. There is clear synergy in specific areas, such as heritage imaging and special collections, but how might this be strengthened in our wider activities to create a stronger partnership and a more equal one with the library as initiator and collaborator rather than as service provider? This relationship has different models and a significant factor is where the DH centre (or research group) is based. UCLDH is a virtual centre with membership across all faculties, and management based in Humanities, Computer Science, and the Built Environment, all within academic departments. In the USA, DH centres are often hosted in the library (for example Stanford [1] Duke [2] Cincinnati [3]) whereas elsewhere the links are more informal (Sula 2013). Muñoz (20120), MITH is another example, argues that neither DH nor libraries should be considered a service. Posner (2013) points to administrative and institutional problems that play their part. ADHO has a Libraries and DH SIG with a pre-conference, Libraries as Research Partner in Digital Humanities, at DH2019 [4]. The model in mainland China is mixed but closer to the USA. The DH research group at Peking University (PKU) is in the library [5], hosting the DH Forum there since 2016. The Shanghai (public and academic) Library has a very active DH research group (Mahony and Gao 2019) and is hosting (Chinese) DH2020. The authors are running a two-day workshop at UCL in collaboration with PKU library to explore and analyse how their practice leverages this relationship between library and research group with a focus on collaborative working, integrated and innovative approaches. We examine how cultural differences (institutional and societal) shape PKU work activities and their formulation of DH practice and wider engagement. This will also be informed by the published reports of Research Libraries UK, particularly their recent work on the creation, archiving, and preservation of tools for DH (Kamposiori 2019). [1] <https://digitalhumanities.stanford.edu/about-dh-stanford> [2] <https://digitalhumanities.duke.edu/about-digital-humanities> [3] <http://dsc.uc.edu/> [4] <https://adholibdh.github.io/dh2019-preconference/> [5] <https://www.lib.pku.edu.cn/portal/en/xsjl/shuzirenwen> Kamposiori, Christina. (2017). ‘The role of Research Libraries in the creation, archiving, curation, and preservation of tools for the Digital Humanities.’ RLUK Report. Mahony, Simon. & Gao, Jin. (2019) 'Linguistic and Cultural Hegemony in the Digital Humanities', Proceedings of the Digital Humanities Congress 2018, Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield. Muñoz, Trevor. 2012. ‘Digital Humanities in the Library Isn’t a Service.’ Blog. Trevor Muñoz: Libraries Digital Humanities Data Curation. Posner, Miriam. 2013. ‘No Half Measures: Overcoming Common Challenges to Doing Digital Humanities in the Library.’ Journal of Library Administration 53 (1): 43–52. Sula, Chris (2013) 'Digital Humanities and Libraries: A Conceptual Model', Journal of Library Administration, 53:1, 10-26
Investigating the discourse on Open GLAM Marco Humbel University College London Keywords: Digitization, Open Access, Critical Heritage Studies Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) advocates for the adoption of Open Access policies in the heritage sector. Heritage organizations are hence called to make “[…] public domain materials open for use without any restrictions, and [make] copyrighted materials available under the provisions of fair use (non-commercial, educational)” (Kapsalis, 2016: 2). At the latest since the launch of the EU co-funded OpenGLAM initiative in 2011, ‘openness’ became a key argument to justify digitization projects (Lutz, 2018: 3). Similar to heritage digitization in general (Prescott and Hughes, 2018), Open GLAM is envisioned to ‘democratize’ the access to cultural heritage. However, for heritage organizations openness comes not without practical and political implications. Indeed, research has shown that questions on ownership, authority or generating revenue make Open GLAM a complex undertaking (Ross et al., 2018), especially from a post-colonial perspective (Pavis and Wallace, 2019). Within this context, this paper takes a step back and investigates critically how among others the Free- and Open Source Software movement informed the current notion of ‘openness’ in Open GLAM (Hamilton and Saunderson, 2017: 8). By reviewing the Open GLAM discourse in the literature and policy documents that advocate for open politics, this paper illustrates why the current notion of ‘open’ can create tensions when applied one-to-one into the heritage sector. This talk brings together and complements critical investigations on heritage digitization and open politics (e.g.: Thylstrup, 2018; Tkacz, 2015; Rév, 2020). Thus, it seeks to contribute to the evolving reflection of what ‘open’ could mean for the heritage sector (Wallace, 2020: 7-8). It is likely to be relevant for researchers who are interested in the impact of digital culture on the heritage sector, and digitization professionals in libraries, archives and museums. References Hamilton, G. and Saunderson, F. (2017). Open Licensing for Cultural Heritage. London: Facet Publishing. Kapsalis, E. (2016). The Impact of Open Access on Galleries, Libraries, Museums, & Archives. Smithsonian Emerging Leaders Development Program http://siarchives.si.edu/sites/default/files/pdfs/2016_03_10_OpenCollections_Public.pdf (accessed 6 February 2020). Lutz, S. (2018). {D1G1TAL HER1TAGE}. From cultural to digital heritage. , Hamburger Journal Für Kulturanthropologie(7): 3–23. Pavis, M. and Wallace, A. (2019). Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access relevant to the digitization and restitution of African Cultural Heritage and associated materials. doi:10.5281/zenodo.2620596. https://zenodo.org/record/2620596 (accessed 6 February 2020). Prescott, A. and Hughes, L. M. (2018). Why Do We Digitize? The Case for Slow Digitization. Archive Journal http://www.archivejournal.net/essays/why-do-we-digitize-the-case-for-slow-digitization/ (accessed 6 February 2020). Rév, I. (2020). Accessing the Past, or Should Archives Provide Open Access?. Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access. The MIT Press, pp. 229–47 doi:10.7551/mitpress/11885.001.0001. https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4933/Reassembling-Scholarly-CommunicationsHistories (accessed 19 November 2020). Ross, J., Beamer, A. and Ganley, C. (2018). Digital collections, open data and the boundaries of openness: a case study from the National Galleries of Scotland. MW18: MW 2018. Vancouver https://mw18.mwconf.org/paper/digital-collections-open-data-and-the-boundaries-of-openness-a-case-study-from-the-national-galleries-of-scotland/ (accessed 6 February 2020). Thylstrup, N. B. (2018). The Politics of Mass Digitization. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Tkacz, N. (2015). Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press. Wallace, A. (2020). Introduction. Critical Open GLAM: Towards [Appropriate] Open Access for Cultural Heritage doi:10.21428/74d826b1.be9df175. https://openglam.pubpub.org/pub/introduction-to-critical-open-glam (accessed 29 October 2020).
Accessions to Repositories Data: Potentials for Mapping National Collection Practices c.2007 – 2020. Kevin Matthew Jones The National Archives, Kew Keywords: Research Resources, Digital Methodologies, Data Analysis. Each year, the National Archives (TNA) receives data from across the United Kingdom on accessions to repositories from across the archive sector. Although collected as part of routine cataloguing procedures, this data holds the potential to both reveal patterns of collection within the national sector during the first decades of the twenty-first century, and to generate new knowledge on what has been collected and where. Since October 2021, research has been undertaken to repurpose this accessions to repositories data, to prepare it for analysis, and to develop methods to make it more accessible. This paper will outline the digital methodologies adopted by the project to refine, visualise and analyse accessions data. It will discuss the findings from the research, and the strategies explored to improve access to the data. It will present visualisations to outline the potentials for accessions data to create new knowledge, the relevance of its findings to the digital humanities, and the possibilities for new understandings of national heritage collections the research offers.

Session 4

Thursday 16:00 - 17:30

High Tor 2

Chair: Isabella Magni

Digital Humanities and the Library: Research Partners?

Bingjun Liu ,
Yaming Fu ,
Simon Mahony

Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai

Keywords: digital humanities, academic libraries, research partnerships

This talk presents results from our recent research analysing the relationship between digital humanities and the research library. There is clear synergy in specific areas, such as heritage imaging and special collections, but how might this be strengthened in our wider activities to create a stronger partnership and a more equal one with the library as initiator and collaborator rather than as service provider?

This relationship has different models and a significant factor is where the DH centre (or research group) is based. UCLDH is a virtual centre with membership across all faculties, and management based in Humanities, Computer Science, and the Built Environment, all within academic departments. In the USA, DH centres are often hosted in the library (for example Stanford [1] Duke [2] Cincinnati [3]) whereas elsewhere the links are more informal (Sula 2013). Muñoz (20120), MITH is another example, argues that neither DH nor libraries should be considered a service. Posner (2013) points to administrative and institutional problems that play their part. ADHO has a Libraries and DH SIG with a pre-conference, Libraries as Research Partner in Digital Humanities, at DH2019 [4]. The model in mainland China is mixed but closer to the USA. The DH research group at Peking University (PKU) is in the library [5], hosting the DH Forum there since 2016. The Shanghai (public and academic) Library has a very active DH research group (Mahony and Gao 2019) and is hosting (Chinese) DH2020.

The authors are running a two-day workshop at UCL in collaboration with PKU library to explore and analyse how their practice leverages this relationship between library and research group with a focus on collaborative working, integrated and innovative approaches. We examine how cultural differences (institutional and societal) shape PKU work activities and their formulation of DH practice and wider engagement. This will also be informed by the published reports of Research Libraries UK, particularly their recent work on the creation, archiving, and preservation of tools for DH (Kamposiori 2019).

[1] <https://digitalhumanities.stanford.edu/about-dh-stanford>

[2] <https://digitalhumanities.duke.edu/about-digital-humanities>

[3] <http://dsc.uc.edu/>

[4] <https://adholibdh.github.io/dh2019-preconference/>

[5] <https://www.lib.pku.edu.cn/portal/en/xsjl/shuzirenwen>

Kamposiori, Christina. (2017). ‘The role of Research Libraries in the creation, archiving, curation, and preservation of tools for the Digital Humanities.’ RLUK Report.

Mahony, Simon. & Gao, Jin. (2019) 'Linguistic and Cultural Hegemony in the Digital Humanities', Proceedings of the Digital Humanities Congress 2018, Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield.

Muñoz, Trevor. 2012. ‘Digital Humanities in the Library Isn’t a Service.’ Blog. Trevor

Muñoz: Libraries Digital Humanities Data Curation.

Posner, Miriam. 2013. ‘No Half Measures: Overcoming Common Challenges to Doing Digital Humanities in the Library.’ Journal of Library Administration 53 (1): 43–52.

Sula, Chris (2013) 'Digital Humanities and Libraries: A Conceptual Model', Journal of Library Administration, 53:1, 10-26

Investigating the discourse on Open GLAM

Marco Humbel

University College London

Keywords: Digitization, Open Access, Critical Heritage Studies

Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) advocates for the adoption of Open Access policies in the heritage sector. Heritage organizations are hence called to make “[…] public domain materials open for use without any restrictions, and [make] copyrighted materials available under the provisions of fair use (non-commercial, educational)” (Kapsalis, 2016: 2). At the latest since the launch of the EU co-funded OpenGLAM initiative in 2011, ‘openness’ became a key argument to justify digitization projects (Lutz, 2018: 3). Similar to heritage digitization in general (Prescott and Hughes, 2018), Open GLAM is envisioned to ‘democratize’ the access to cultural heritage. However, for heritage organizations openness comes not without practical and political implications. Indeed, research has shown that questions on ownership, authority or generating revenue make Open GLAM a complex undertaking (Ross et al., 2018), especially from a post-colonial perspective (Pavis and Wallace, 2019).

Within this context, this paper takes a step back and investigates critically how among others the Free- and Open Source Software movement informed the current notion of ‘openness’ in Open GLAM (Hamilton and Saunderson, 2017: 8). By reviewing the Open GLAM discourse in the literature and policy documents that advocate for open politics, this paper illustrates why the current notion of ‘open’ can create tensions when applied one-to-one into the heritage sector. This talk brings together and complements critical investigations on heritage digitization and open politics (e.g.: Thylstrup, 2018; Tkacz, 2015; Rév, 2020). Thus, it seeks to contribute to the evolving reflection of what ‘open’ could mean for the heritage sector (Wallace, 2020: 7-8). It is likely to be relevant for researchers who are interested in the impact of digital culture on the heritage sector, and digitization professionals in libraries, archives and museums.

References

Hamilton, G. and Saunderson, F. (2017). Open Licensing for Cultural Heritage. London: Facet Publishing.

Kapsalis, E. (2016). The Impact of Open Access on Galleries, Libraries, Museums, & Archives. Smithsonian Emerging Leaders Development Program http://siarchives.si.edu/sites/default/files/pdfs/2016_03_10_OpenCollections_Public.pdf (accessed 6 February 2020).

Lutz, S. (2018). {D1G1TAL HER1TAGE}. From cultural to digital heritage. , Hamburger Journal Für Kulturanthropologie(7): 3–23.

Pavis, M. and Wallace, A. (2019). Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access relevant to the digitization and restitution of African Cultural Heritage and associated materials. doi:10.5281/zenodo.2620596. https://zenodo.org/record/2620596 (accessed 6 February 2020).

Prescott, A. and Hughes, L. M. (2018). Why Do We Digitize? The Case for Slow Digitization. Archive Journal http://www.archivejournal.net/essays/why-do-we-digitize-the-case-for-slow-digitization/ (accessed 6 February 2020).

Rév, I. (2020). Accessing the Past, or Should Archives Provide Open Access?. Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access. The MIT Press, pp. 229–47 doi:10.7551/mitpress/11885.001.0001. https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4933/Reassembling-Scholarly-CommunicationsHistories (accessed 19 November 2020).

Ross, J., Beamer, A. and Ganley, C. (2018). Digital collections, open data and the boundaries of openness: a case study from the National Galleries of Scotland. MW18: MW 2018. Vancouver https://mw18.mwconf.org/paper/digital-collections-open-data-and-the-boundaries-of-openness-a-case-study-from-the-national-galleries-of-scotland/ (accessed 6 February 2020).

Thylstrup, N. B. (2018). The Politics of Mass Digitization. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tkacz, N. (2015). Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press.

Wallace, A. (2020). Introduction. Critical Open GLAM: Towards [Appropriate] Open Access for Cultural Heritage doi:10.21428/74d826b1.be9df175. https://openglam.pubpub.org/pub/introduction-to-critical-open-glam (accessed 29 October 2020).

Accessions to Repositories Data: Potentials for Mapping National Collection Practices c.2007 – 2020.

Kevin Matthew Jones

The National Archives, Kew

Keywords: Research Resources, Digital Methodologies, Data Analysis.

Each year, the National Archives (TNA) receives data from across the United Kingdom on accessions to repositories from across the archive sector. Although collected as part of routine cataloguing procedures, this data holds the potential to both reveal patterns of collection within the national sector during the first decades of the twenty-first century, and to generate new knowledge on what has been collected and where.

Since October 2021, research has been undertaken to repurpose this accessions to repositories data, to prepare it for analysis, and to develop methods to make it more accessible. This paper will outline the digital methodologies adopted by the project to refine, visualise and analyse accessions data. It will discuss the findings from the research, and the strategies explored to improve access to the data. It will present visualisations to outline the potentials for accessions data to create new knowledge, the relevance of its findings to the digital humanities, and the possibilities for new understandings of national heritage collections the research offers.

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