This panel will bring together scholars who have worked on data-oriented projects using library collections. These projects all took place during the course of a single semester and demonstrate various ways that scholars can use and extend library data. Scholars working with library data have curated themed subcollections of Library collections, created datasets for (computational) research and analysis, and analyzed textual data from collections materials to identify interesting features or patterns. Partnerships with these researchers were enabled by the ongoing Collections as Data @ Pitt project, which aims to make library collections data more accessible for research, teaching, and learning.

Presenters:

Kahlila Chaar-Pérez, Chatham University JKM Library & People’s Media Record Fellow

Addison Eldin, English Composition

Benjamin Naismith, Linguistics

Projects:

Kahlila Chaar-Pérez’s Afro-Latin American Studies Collection seeks to provide the basis for an easily discoverable collection of materials pertinent to the study of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean, from the origins of enslavement to today's emancipatory struggles. In doing so, she sought to make more visible library items that are not easily discoverable because of a racialized cataloging system.

Addison Eldin’s CaD project looked at three magazines that emphasize a marginalized positionality in their authorship and readership: The Ladder, Shooting Star Review, and Bitch. Text analysis was performed using Python, with results used to interpret how each magazine constructs and represents the shared identity under focus.

For his CAD project, Ben Naismith created an extension layer for the Bob Nelkin Collection of ACC-PARC Records. This extension layer applies Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to explore the data collection, process the data, and provide additional text information which may be of use to researchers.

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