Participatory Action Research for a Digital Humanities research project: Investigating Open GLAM in the context of Social Movement Archives

This paper responses to the question: How can the methodology of Participatory Action Research (PAR) be used to investigate Open Access to digital collections in the context of the Marx Memorial Library London (MML)

Open Data an Wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken der Schweiz

Unter dem Stichwort Open Data wird unter anderem die Bereitstellung von Digitalisaten unter freien Lizenzen verstanden. Nationale und internationale Studien haben ergeben, dass Gedächtnisinstitutionen in den nächsten Jahren vermehrt Konzepte von Open Data umsetzen werden. Im Rahmen einer Bachelor-Thesis beschäftigte sich der Autor mit der Frage wie die Umsetzung von Open Data in Wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken der Schweiz konkret aussieht. Der Artikel fasst die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung zusammen. Aus den Resultaten formulierte der Autor eine Handlungsempfehlung für Bibliotheken

Socio-cultural challenges in collections digital infrastructures

Purpose This paper aims to explore the accelerations and constraints libraries, archives, museums and heritage organisations (“collections-holding organisations”) face in their role as collection data providers for digital infrastructures. To date, digital infrastructures operate within the cultural heritage domain typically as data aggregation platforms, such as Europeana or Art UK. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews with 18 individuals in 8 UK collections-holding organisations and 2 international aggregators. Findings Discussions about digital infrastructure development often lay great emphasis on questions and problems that are technical and legal in nature. As important as technical and legal matters are, more latent, yet potent challenges exist too. Though less discussed in the literature, collections-holding organisations' capacity to participate in digital infrastructures is dependent on a complex interplay of funding allocation across the sector, divergent traditions of collection description and disciplinaries’ idiosyncrasies. Accordingly, we call for better social-cultural and trans-sectoral (collections-holding organisations, universities and technological providers) understandings of collection data infrastructure development. Research limitations/implications The authors recommend developing more understanding of the social-cultural aspects (e.g. disciplinary conventions) and their impact on collection data dissemination. More studies on the impact and opportunities of unified collections for different audiences and collections-holding organisations themselves are required too. Practical implications Sustainable financial investment across the heritage sector is required to address the discrepancies between different organisation types in their capacity to deliver collection data. Smaller organisations play a vital role in diversifying the (digital) historical canon, but they often struggle to digitise collections and bring catalogues online in the first place. In addition, investment in existing infrastructures for collection data dissemination and unification is necessary, instead of creating new platforms, with various levels of uptake and longevity. Ongoing investments in collections curation and high-quality cataloguing are prerequisites for a sustainable heritage sector and collection data infrastructures. Investments in the sustainability of infrastructures are not a replacement for research and vice versa. Social implications The authors recommend establishing networks where collections-holding organisations, technology providers and users can communicate their experiences and needs in an ongoing way and influence policy. Originality/value To date, the research focus on developing collection data infrastructures has tended to be on the drive to adopt specific technological solutions and copyright licensing practices. This paper offers a critical and holistic analysis of the dispersed experience of collections-holding organisations in their role as data providers for digital infrastructures. The paper contributes to the emerging understanding of the latent factors that make infrastructural endeavours in the heritage sector complex undertakings

Towards a Network Analysis of Hans Sloane's Collection: A Preliminary Study

“The Sloane Lab: Looking back to build future shared collections” is a 3-year project funded by the UKRI Towards a National Collection programme. The project aims to re-establish connections between Sloane’s collections and catalogues and to mend the broken links between the past and present of the UK's founding collection in the catalogues of the British Museum (BM), Natural History Museum (NHM) and the British Library (BL). Engaging with interested communities and employing digital technology, the project will integrate a fragmented cultural heritage collection and enable its unification through a participatory lens. The collection was amassed by Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), who gathered and, with his amanuenses, catalogued more than 70,000 disparate objects which formed the initial nucleus of the original British Museum (the collection was then dispersed across the present-day BM, BL, and NHM). The project will integrate disparate data sources, ranging from historical catalogues to contemporary records, and will enable a wide analysis of Sloane’s extensive social network. As shown by James Delbourgo, Sloane’s collection was “not the achievement of a single individual, but rather the result of exchanges involving countless people across the globe” (Collecting the World, 2017, p. 202). Sloane’s historical catalogues contain many references to people and places, but this data has never been studied extensively through network analysis methods. Our goal is to build a graph of Sloane’s social network by analysing mentions of people in the catalogues, to further understand the connections between them. In addition, we hope to devise computational approaches that can focalize the “data absences” that affect the collection, centring the biases that affected heritage description practices, and drawing attention to people who had an important role in the collection, but whose contribution has been historically overlooked or is now lost. At present, we have access to the digital versions of five of Sloane’s historical manuscript catalogues, which have been encoded in TEI-XML format in the Enlightenment Architectures project. We have started our study from the Miscellanea manuscript, which actually contains seven separate catalogues, plus two indices. We have built a parser to extract data about people and places from the catalogues from the XML files, and gathered more information about them through VIAF and Wikidata. We have then analysed the networks of people and places in the whole dataset, visualised the data, and compared the individual catalogues to understand how their social networks are linked, how they differ from each other, and how they relate to the places and to the objects themselves. In this presentation, we will show the results of our initial analysis, which will then be expanded to other historical catalogues and data sources, laying the foundations for a more complete understanding of the social network behind Sloane’s collection

The Digitisation and Open Access Politics of Social Movement Archives

Open Access to cultural heritage, also known as ‘Open Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums’ (Open GLAM), refers to a concept that asks heritage organisations to make, whenever legally possible, their digitised collections available online as open and interoperable data sets. So far, the discourse on Open Access to cultural heritage has primarily focussed on major art galleries. This thesis enriches the research and the discourse on Open Access to cultural heritage by focussing on the perspectives of organisations which understand archiving as a form of activism: Social Movement Archives. I ask: What does and what could Open Access to cultural heritage mean in the context of Social Movement Archives? Through Participatory Action Research (PAR) with the Marx Memorial Library London (MML), seven interviews with Social Movement Archives practitioners and a critical reading of the academic- and grey literature on Open GLAM, I investigate the digitisation and Open Access politics of Social Movement Archives, as crystallised in their missions, digitisation projects and ethical and legal practices. Crucially, I highlight the relevance of Social Movement Archives as sites for questioning and reflecting on institutionalised archival theory and praxis. This thesis offers a critical intervention in Open GLAM through the microcosm of Social Movement Archives. Throughout this thesis I demonstrate a certain, while not complete, incompatibility of Open GLAM with the political mandate of Social Movement Archives and the practical realities they operate in. I argue to move towards a social justice framework for Open Access to cultural heritage. The basis for the framework is an enhanced understanding of the archival principle of provenance, grounded in affective responsibilities towards collections’ stakeholders. Due to the recognition of digital archival collections as means for political action a social justice framework also assesses the positive and negative impact of Open Access in relation to social justice

The Application of HTR to Early-modern Museum Collections: a Case Study of Sir Hans Sloane's Miscellanies Catalogue

Abstract of paper 0802 presented at the Digital Humanities Conference 2019 (DH2019), Utrecht , the Netherlands 9-12 July, 2019

Efficient integration of transmembrane domains depends on the folding properties of the upstream sequences

The topology of most membrane proteins is defined by the successive integration of α-helical transmembrane domains at the Sec61 translocon. The translocon provides a pore for the transfer of polypeptide segments across the membrane while giving them lateral access to the lipid. For each polypeptide segment of ∼20 residues, the combined hydrophobicities of its constituent amino acids were previously shown to define the extent of membrane integration. Here, we discovered that different sequences preceding a potential transmembrane domain substantially affect its hydrophobicity requirement for integration. Rapidly folding domains, sequences that are intrinsically disordered or very short or capable of binding chaperones with high affinity, allow for efficient transmembrane integration with low-hydrophobicity thresholds for both orientations in the membrane. In contrast, long protein fragments, folding-deficient mutant domains, and artificial sequences not binding chaperones interfered with membrane integration, requiring higher hydrophobicity. We propose that the latter sequences, as they compact on their hydrophobic residues, partially folded but unable to reach a native state, expose hydrophobic surfaces that compete with the translocon for the emerging transmembrane segment, reducing integration efficiency. The results suggest that rapid folding or strong chaperone binding is required for efficient transmembrane integration