Station Eleven (2014) by @EmilyMandel. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

 

Station Eleven (2014) by Emily St. John Mandel. COVID-19 Recreational Reading 

August said that given an infinite number of parallel universes, there had to be one where there had been no pandemic and he’d grown up to be a physicist as planned, or one where there had been a pandemic but the virus had had a subtly different genetic structure, some minuscule variance that rendered it survivable, in any case a universe in which civilization hadn’t been so brutally interrupted. -- Station Eleven

What better book to read in the midst of a global pandemic that has, at the time of this writing, infected millions and killed hundreds of thousands? Mandel, in her post-global pandemic world has written a work that stands at the top tier of literary end-times along with two of my personal favorites from recent years, Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake, 2003) and Cormac McCarthy (The Road, 2006) as well as classic, less apocalyptic books, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) by Daniel Defoe (see review) and The Plague by Albert Camus (1947). As a side note, Station Eleven is also an upcoming timely Netflix series.

The literary world has been busy at this time compiling and curating list of plague works, many of which include Mandel’s Station Eleven; here are a few of those lists:

• Pandemics: An Essential Reading List by Tobias Carroll (10 March 2020)

• 12 Books About Pandemics by Electric Lit (10 March 2020)

• The 16 Best Pandemic Books, Fiction and Non-Fiction by Sarah S. Davis (30 July 2020)

• Epidemic! Fictional Plagues and Pandemics by ChiPubLib_Adults

• Pandemic Books by Goodreads

Turning back to Station Eleven, the pandemic that serves as the basis for the plot is eerily like the current COVID-19 pandemic. In the novel, the pandemic arrives in Toronto via a passenger plane coming from the Republic of Georgia. The resulting “Georgia Flu” quickly infects the entire world, quickly killing billions of people and leaving small bands of humans. Station Eleven is the story of some of those survivors (and their descendants) spread across the Great Lakes region of North America. 

Mandel’s story is told across time, moving between pre-pandemic times, the Year 0 of the start of the pandemic, and the current time. Mandel builds her work around the life (and death) of Arthur Leander, an actor in perhaps the end time of his career, now a successful Shakespearean actor playing the role of King Lear. Key to the story is Kirsten Raymonde, a minor player in Leander’s Lear, but the center around which the novel turns. 

All three caravans of the Traveling Symphony are labeled as such, THE TRAVELING SYMPHONY lettered in white on both sides, but the lead caravan carries an additional line of text: Because survival is insufficient. -- Station Eleven

Raymonde’s life as a young woman and a member of The Travelling Symphony (a troupe of players and musicians who traverse the Great Lakes region performing Shakespeare’s plays and playing music) is the center of the novel’s present. 

Much more description of the plot or characters would reveal too much of the complex and intertwined nature of Mandel’s work. Station Eleven builds on the tropes of the genre. Mandel’s development of character is excellent and she writes compelling dialog. She juggles a complex plot well and true to the genre, riffs on the exchange between two of her characters: 

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Elizabeth insisted. “Are we supposed to believe that civilization has just come to an end?” 

“Well,” Clark offered, “it was always a little fragile, wouldn’t you say?” -- Station Eleven

Mandel recently released her latest novel, The Glass Hotel (2020) that has received excellent reviews. 

• Read: July 19, 2020 | Buy on Kindle

• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

Game Theory 101: The Basics (2011) by @gametheory101. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

Game Theory 101: The Basics (2011) by William Spaniel. COVID-19 Recreational Reading 

The growth of the use of game theory in various fields and increasing references in popular culture makes it important for a larger audience to become aware of the basic tenets and precepts of game theory. Many people have heard of the most basic element of game theory, the prisoner’s dilemma, but how many have a more than rudimentary understanding of how it works?

Spaniel’s aptly titled Game Theory 101 is a fine primer into understanding the core components of game theory. As noted in the introduction: 

Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interaction among rational decision-makers. It has applications in all fields of social science, as well as in logic, systems science and computer science. Originally, it addressed zero-sum games, in which each participant's gains or losses are exactly balanced by those of the other participants. Today, game theory applies to a wide range of behavioral relations, and is now an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals, and computers.

Neumann (1903-1957) was a key figure in the development of game theory. It grew as a distinct field when von Neumann published the paper “On the Theory of Games of Strategy” in 1928. Soon after the nuclear test by the Soviet Union, game theory took off as a method to understand the outcomes of nuclear war. Von Neumann is often paired with John Nash (1928–2015) as the other key figure in game theory. Nash (subject of the book (1998) and movie (2001), A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar) is the creator of the set of strategies termed the “Nash equilibrium”. This, along with the “prisoner’s dilemma” -- likely the most well-known element of game theory -- are well covered in Spaniel’s book. 

Final Thought: This book has quickly explained all of the tools you will need to solve introductory level questions about matrix form games. Good luck in applying them. And always remember: weak dominance will be the bane of your existence.

NOTE: this is a newer and expanded version of the book; you should look for the expanded, Game Theory 101: The Complete Textbook.

• Read: June 16, 2010 | Buy on Kindle

• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

 

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens. COVID-19 Recreational Reading 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. -- A Tale of Two Cities

And so begins A Tale of Two Cities with one of the most well known, quoted, and often parodied openings in English literature. As is a hallmark with Dickens, A Tale is populated with a host of memorable characters. For me, and probably many, the broad portrayals are the most memorable. The dual poles of Jerry Cruncher and Jarvis Lorry; the indomitable Iron Lady of the Manette family, Miss Pross; and the chilling women of the Revolution, Madame Defarge and the Fury that is The Vengeance. The more staid, and "lead" characters of Lucie Manette, Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay, and of course Dr. Manette never quite rise to the level of the others. 

On this re-reading of Tale, I was focused on Dickens’ use of language. A masterful artist in capturing accents in dialog, his often baroque stylings in the narrative voice are striking in their complexity and ornateness:

Other sound than the owl’s voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.

Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams had driven him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him to itself, and he must go.

and a few lines later:

Yes. The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck.

Compare the above lines with a bit of monologue from Jerry Cruncher:

Bu-u-ust me!’ said Mr Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, ‘if I ain’t, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. For, I tell you,’ here he addressed his wife once more, ‘I won’t be gone agin, in this manner.

With the events of A Tale taking place a generation before the writing, A Tale is a reflection of the time of the French Revolution through Dickens' lens of history (much like Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris [1831]). London and Paris rhetorical stand-ins for the French and English cultures. Is the new world created by the Darnay family (no longer French, not totally English) a prefiguring of a new European world (would it be too much of a 21st century new world be a vision of the European Union?) being dragged into the 19th (and beyond) century on the tumbrils that carry Carton to his death

And, paring with it's iconic opening, A Tale suitable ends with eminently a quotable line by Sydney Carton:

‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.’

• Read: June 21, 2010 | Buy on Kindle

• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

The Little Drummer Girl (1983) by John le Carré. Pre-COVID-19 Recreational Reading

The Little Drummer Girl (1983) by John le Carré. Pre-COVID-19 Recreational Reading 

Some interrogations are conducted in order to elicit truth, others to elicit lies.

I was a latecomer to the works of John le Carré. Previous to The Little Drummer Girl (1983), I'd read, first, The Tailor of Panama (1996) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). Both of those (part of my travel reading program for, respectively Panama and Berlin) were brilliant. Little Drummer girl, which was mostly in my consciousness from the 1984 Diane Keaton film version, never quite clicked for me. 

The intricacy of plots within plots, taking place in London, Berlin, Palestine, and Israel were particularly convoluted and hard to follow. 

This edition includes a 1993 introduction by le Carré covers the detailed research he did for the book with multiple visits to Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon, as well as a meeting with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. This introduction, in fact, was perhaps the most interesting part of the novel:

As to myself, looking at it for the first time after ten years, I find that I am uncharacteristically at ease with it, my main regret being that we spend a little too long with the Germans at the beginning. My sadness is that, with few changes, the story could be played today, tomorrow, or the next day, and Charlie my heroine would still come out of it, as I did myself, torn to pieces by the battle between two peoples who both have justice on their side (1993 introduction by John le Carré). 

• Read: January 3, 2020 | Buy on Kindle

• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

Archives and Special Collections Linked Data: Navigating between Notes and Nodes (2020) by @OCLC Research, @nbputnam, @KarenS_Y, et al.

OCLC Research Archives and Special Collections Linked Data Review Group. 2020. Archives and Special Collections Linked Data: Navigating between Notes and Nodes. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. 14 pp.  https://doi.org/10.25333/4gtz-zd88. COVID-19 Professional Reading. 

Linked data offers many possibilities for enhancing access to library and archives materials. OCLC has been a leading force in examining areas that can expand and simplify access to collections through a number of collaborative projects. See, for example, Creating Library Linked Data with Wikibase: Lessons Learned from Project Passage (2019)..

While there is significant work in expanding the use of linked data in what could be called commodity level collections, it is in the area of archives and special(ized) collections that linked data has some of the most important potential applications. 

This report from the OCLC Research Archives and Special Collections Linked Data Review Group is an important step in expanding the discussion of linked data in these areas. The group, comprised of sixteen practitioners from a wide range of collections were joined by OCLC colleagues, led by Nathan Putnam and Karen Smith-Yoshimura and including team members Merrilee Proffitt, Bruce Washburn and Chela Scott Weber, who represent some of the best applied thinking on linked data in the library world. 

As noted in the introduction:

As libraries and other cultural heritage organizations plot a course to move toward a linked data future, it is important to ensure that all collections are represented in that future. While published works represented in monographs may be relatively easy to represent in linked data, this is not the case for special collections materials (rare books, manuscripts, photographs, institutional archives, etc.) that may be unique or may have special physical characteristics that are of particular interest for study (p. 5).

Though there is much promise in linked data for archives and special collections, the report specifically outlines barriers and concerns to wide-spread implementation. Among these are:

Context trapped in narrative description

• “When descriptions for these items or collections are represented in systems that were designed primarily for bibliographic description, much valuable data is recorded in unstructured notes. In either case, it is labor intensive to extract entities and relationships from these unstructured notes. This data may be well served by linked data structures, but the number of unique cases for archival and other traditions of descriptive practice may make it difficult to move forward as a community” (p. 6);

Complex models

• Issues include trying to “Problems have arisen due to trying to model everything in the description of an item,” resistance to adopting a shared model; complex or locally derived modelts “make crosswalking into flatter linked data structures more difficult” (pp. 6-7).

High-barrier infrastructure

• “Software, data, and workflows take a lot of work to establish and often lack institutional buy-in and support” and “Lack of support from identifiers in the data, such as issues with minting identifiers and persistency” (p. 7);

Scalability

• “Can linked data standards, practices, and workflows scale? Institutions that collect and steward these materials include both large, relatively well-funded institutions and small and less well-resourced repositories. There are few successful exemplars of linked data implementation in special collections; stories that exemplify success will be necessary to build support with resource allocators and to demonstrate utility to dispersed user communities who will directly benefit from linked data efforts” (p. 7).

A few issues were discussed in more depth in the report. Specifically (pp. 7-10):

• Descriptive models do not currently service special collections

• Discursive description presents a challenge to entification

• Potential for better discovery

• Prescriptive vs. permissive data modeling

• Ethical issues and community engagement

• Challenges around multilinguality

• Sustainability

• Archival issues

• The need to express relationships and change over time

• The long tail of authorities/identifiers in special collections

I would like to focus on a few of these:

• Potential for better discovery. As noted in the report, linked data will better uncover key areas for discoverability. These include identity markers for people (e.g. gender); and geographical indicators and contact networks (e.g. who worked with who). As the report notes, “Even though linked data structures will bring significant advantages to discovery, end users will need to adapt to new ways of interacting with linked data structures.” (p. 8);

• Ethical issues and community engagement. Linked data provides many opportunities to increase access, but if the means of expanding that access remains siloed in a knowledgeable, but inherently limited group of practitioners, there is a strong danger of creating a well-linked and networked collection of silos that do not accommodate diverse terms, practices, and knowledge. As noted in the report: “This moment offers an opportunity to create pathways to disrupt our constructs of authority and to provide a space and a place for others with more expertise (researchers, community members) to contribute their knowledge. Institutions should be careful when balancing risk and opportunity for those who may be impacted” (p. 9);

• Sustainability. “To date, the majority of linked data efforts have been grant-funded or special one-off projects ... Everyone wants easy-to-use and implementable tools embedded in a sustainable infrastructure.” (p. 9). No need to add more to that statement; 

• The long tail of authorities/identifiers in special collections. Much of the value of archival and special collections is in the unique content they contain. The challenge of creating authority records and identifiers that may have a single global instance is both a workload and resource issue. Expanding this to include museum collections additionally multiplies these issues. The report comments: “How do we create and manage authorities across systems and institutions in a lighter-weight way that still can take advantage of the network? It is not possible (or desirable) to create entities for everything; instead, we should develop approaches that help to balance local versus global IDs much like NACO and local authority files do now” (p. 10).

As I noted at the start, it is possible and likely that many of the issues around linked data for current publications and widely acquired materials will be solved through the application of vendor tools and distributed description processes. The huge potential for uncovering previously hidden information in archival and special collections is where linked data will have the most impact. In conclusion, the report notes: 

Libraries are in a state of moving from experimentation to production with linked data, and it is vitally important that the needs for descriptions of special collections materials are not left behind at this critical moment (p. 11).

• Read: August 8, 2020 | Find Online

• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

After Henry: Essays (1992) & Where I Was From (2003) by Joan Didion. Pre-COVID-19 Recreational Reading

After Henry: Essays (1992) & Where I Was From (2003) by Joan Didion. Pre-Covid-19 Recreational Reading.

As noted earlier this year in my discussion of Didion’s South and West: From a Notebook (2017) by Joan Didion:

The non-fiction work of Joan Didion is one of my go-to reads … I think her work resonates with me as a fellow Californian (growing up between the Pacific breakers and the snowy Sierra Nevada) who leaves the West to go "Back East" to live.

These two essay collections reflect even more strongly this push/pull between the West and the East. After Henry, twelve essays grouped geographically on Washington, New York, and California and serves as a memorial to her editor, Henry Robbins of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Where I Was From is a memoir, not so much of her life, but of the California that was. 

In the Washington section of After Henry, the three essays deal primarily with the political side of Washington: “In the Realm of the Fisher King” (1989) pages through the years of the presidency of the consummate Californian (e.g. a non-native), Ronald Reagan. “Insider Baseball” (1988) finds Didion following the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns of that year; and “Shooters Inc.” (1988) speaks to the propensity of politicians to use military “sideshows” to distract the public. 

The California  series is most compelling. “Girl of the Golden West” (1982) is a meditation on Patricia Hearst’s memoir, Every Secret Thing (1982) and riffs on the relationship of the pioneer California families (like the Hearsts) to contemporary California and it’s landscape: 

The extent to which certain places dominate the California imagination is apprehended, even by Californians, only dimly. Deriving not only from the landscape but from the claiming of it, from the romance of emigration, the radical abandonment of established attachments, this imagination remains obdurately symbolic, tending to locate lessons in what the rest of the country perceives only as scenery. From “Girl of the Golden West” (1982).

“Pacific Distances” (1979-91) and “Los Angeles Days” (1988) are looks at life on the eastern edge of the Pacific Rim while “Down at City Hall” (1989) is an examination of Los Angeles mayor, Tom Bradley. “L.A. Noir” (1989) is all murders and movies. “Fire Season” (1989) an excellent depiction of a defining element (literally) of California, fire, specifically the wildfires that are ever present to the Californian, but rise in the national consciousness only when they rise to the level of cataclysm. “Times Mirror Square” (1990) a good summary history of the Los Angeles newspaper world (and its relation to the industry, “back East”):

Californians until recently spoke of the United States beyond Colorado as “back east”. If they went to New York, they went “back” to New York, a way of speaking that carried with it the suggestion of living on a distant frontier. From “Times Mirror Square” (1990)

“Sentimental Mirror” (1990) covers the Central Park Jogger crime and it’s resultant fall out.

 

* * * * * *

Where I Was From is the story of California pioneer families that was more lightly touched on in “Girl of the Golden West” from After Henry. Here, the girl from the Golden West is Didion herself. She traces the roots of her family in California to her fore-bearers from the East in the mid-19th century.

The “was” in the title is very telling. Didion portrays even the most rooted Californian as tempted by the next place, she notes her mother saying: “California, she said, was now too regulated, too taxed, too expensive. She spoke enthusiastically, on the other hand, about moving to the Australian outback.”

A telling portion of the book is Didion’s printing of a school essay (1948) she wrote on the people of her native land: 

They didn’t come west for homes and security, but for adventure and money. They pushed in over the mountains and founded the biggest cities in the west. Up in the Mother Lode they mined gold by day and danced by night. San Francisco’s population multiplied almost twenty times, until 1906, when it burned to the ground, and was built up again nearly as quickly as it had burned. We had an irrigation problem, so we built the greatest dams the world has known. Now both desert and valley are producing food in enormous quantities. California has accomplished much in the past years. It would be easy for us to sit back and enjoy the results of the past. -- "School Essay" (1948) in Where I Was From by Joan Didion (2003)

But perhaps the most important insight into the nature of the Californian (or perhaps any person) is that to understand where you are from, you need to leave. This struck me when I was 30 years removed from California and visiting Riverside in the Imperial Valley, I mentioned I was living in Washington, and it was commented, “I have a cousin in Seattle.” But even time and distance too often fail to lift the veil of the “was from”: 

Yet California has remained in some way impenetrable to me, a wearying enigma, as it has to many of us who are from there. We worry it, correct and revise it, try and fail to define our relationship to it and its relationship to the rest of the country.

But part of this enigma is the nature of time and place. The “was from” is not just a factor of place or distance, but of time and the inexorable changes that occur when you briefly close your eyes or turn to look at the inescapable present. Didion recounts driving with her mother: 

I had repeatedly assured her that we were, at last pointing out an overhead sign: 101 North. “Then where did it all go,” she had asked. She meant where did Gilroy go, where was the Milias Hotel, where could my father eat short ribs now. She meant where did San Juan Bautista go, why was it no longer so sweetly remote as it had been on the day of my wedding there in 1964. She meant where had San Benito and Santa Clara Counties gone as she remembered them, the coastal hills north of Salinas, the cattle grazing, the familiar open vista that had been relentlessly replaced (during the year, two years, three, the blink of the eye during which she had been caring for my father) by mile after mile of pastel subdivisions and labyrinthine exits and entrances to freeways that had not previously existed. For some miles she was silent. California had become, she said then, “all San Jose.”

The tragic story of the Donner-Reed Party (1846-47) resonates with Californians, especially those of us from the North and brought up in the shadows of the Sierras. For Californians, the Donner-Reed story is ultimately heroic and not tragic, perhaps, this is because, as Didion notes: 

One difference between the West and the South, I came to realize in 1970, was this: in the South they remained convinced that they had bloodied their land with history. In California we did not believe that history could bloody the land, or even touch it.

But to get to “am from” from “was from” is a journey that can only be made over the course of a lifetime. Didion quotes from a letter from Virgina Reed, one of the surviving children of the Donner-Reed Party: 

“I have not wrote you half of the trouble we’ve had, but I have wrote you enough to let you know what trouble is … We have left everything, but I don’t care for that. We have got through with our lives. Don’t let this letter dishearten anybody. Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.”

The past admits no shortcuts to the future: “Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can”, this Didion tells us, and I believe, is the only path from “was from” to “am from.” 

• After Henry: Read: January 17, 2020 | Buy on Kindle

• Where I Was From: Read: January 12, 2020 | Buy on Kindle

• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

Always Already Computational: Collections as Data Final Report (2019) by @thomasgpadilla, @librlaurie, @feefifofannah, @sp_meta, Elizabeth Russey Roke, & @StewartVarner

Always Already Computational: Collections as Data Final Report by Thomas Padilla, Laurie Allen, Hannah Frost, Sarah Potvin, Elizabeth Russey Roke, and Stewart Varner. This project was made possible by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (LG‑73‑16‑0096‑16). May 22, 2019. 180 pp. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3152935. Covid-19 Professional Reading.

This report, funded by the Institution of Museum and Library Services documents work done between 2016 and 2019. The project

iterated on, and shared current and potential approaches to developing cultural heritage collections that support computationally-driven research and teaching. With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Always Already Computational held two national forums, organized multiple workshops, shared project outcomes in disciplinary and professional conferences, and generated nearly a dozen deliverables meant to guide institutions as they consider development of collections as data (Project website: https://osf.io/mx6uk/).

A major outcome of the work was the The Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data. The statement defies “collections as data” as follows:

    

The Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data is a set of principles developed with community feedback designed to help guide practitioners through the practical, theoretical, and ethical dimensions of collections as data work. This deliverable does not advance solutions, rather it raises core questions to be resolved in local contexts. The first version of the Santa Barbara Statement was inspired by the first collections as data national forum (UC Santa Barbara, March 1‑3 2017). After its release, the team asynchronously gathered comments on the web via open annotation and sought synchronous feedback across a   series of conversations and workshops. The second version of the statement was revised and released based on community feedback. Permanent link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3066209 (p. 10)

The report also outlines the increased uptake of the concept of collections as data that with an increase of mentions and publications on the concept. 

Some key findings/outcomes:

• Collections as data development must critically engage with bias in collection and description, archival silences, and assumptions about collection use (p. 14);

• Collections as data development does not depend on availability of abundant resources ‑ the work is possible at a wide range of organizations. Incremental progress is a primary feature of this work. Small scale projects, experiments, and discussions can help establish a more inclusive path forward (pp. 14-15);

• Collections as data development offers clear benefits to collection users  and   stewards (p. 15);

• Collections as data development provides a context for productive destabilization of organizational silos often predicated on the management and use of analog resources (p. 15);

• Collections as data development reaches its true potential when it engages specific community needs. Collections as data designed for everyone serve no one (p. 16);

• Collections as data development benefits from collaboration across multiple communities of practice (p. 16).

Seven areas are outlined for further investigation: 

• Moving from ethical consideration to action 

• Conducting more community‑specific user studies to inform workflow development

• Developing functional requirements in service to user and collection steward needs 

• Publicly charting and sharing the terms of relationships with commercial entities   

• Enabling  widespread collections as data discovery   

• Addressing collections as data preservation needs and obstacles  

• Exploring post‑custodial approaches to collections as data (pp. 17-18)

The report includes 15 “Facets” or case studies from a variety of institutions that showed examples of collections as data. The facets include why the collection was selected, how it was done and shared, support, and next steps.To help understand use cases, the user personas were also developed to show the range of potential users of collections as data. 

The report concludes with “50 Things You Can Do to Get Started with Collections as Data.” As the report notes, many of these are likely underway, some highlights include:

• 8. Recognize and identify the things you need to do differently than have been done for physical  collection objects.  

• 14.Socialize Collections as Data as something that can be supported by units and staff across the library. Identify some champions across the organization and people who have skills or position  to do the work. 

• 36. When planning your next digitization project, incorporate additional steps for preparing content  files, OCR or transcription text, and metadata for bulk access. Document the key issues and  decision points you encounter as you evolve and expand your digitization workflows.    

• 41. Take a public services librarian, curator, or archivist out for coffee to talk about collections as  data. Ask what they are hearing from faculty, students, and other users of collections about  computational use and which collections have potential for taking action to lower barriers to  computational use.

• 47. Explore what it would take for your organization to contribute subject data to Wikidata, drawing  on a local collection and then incorporating the Wikidata links into your local discovery  environment.    

The report concludes with “position statements” from many of the participants in the March 2017 National Forum hosted as part of this project. The project was succeeded by Collections as Data: Part to Whole funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 

• Read June 17, 2020 | Find Online

• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.