What Can You Do With 200 Million Newspaper Articles: Exploring GLAM data in the Humanities

Abstract

I’m a historian who works with data from the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives and museums). When I talk about GLAM data, I’m usually talking about things like newspapers, government documents, photographs, letters, websites, and books. Some of it is well-described, structured, and easily accessible, and some is not. All of it offers us the chance to ask new questions of our past, to see things differently. But what tools, what examples, what documentation, and what support are needed to encourage researchers to explore these possibilities—to engage with collections as data? In this talk, I’ll be describing some of my own adventures amidst GLAM data, before focusing on questions of access, infrastructure, and skills development. In particular, I’ll be introducing the GLAM Workbench—a collection of tools, tutorials, examples, and hacks aimed at helping humanities researchers navigate the world of data. What pathways do we need, and how can we build them?