CFParticipation: The Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data

The project team for “Always Already Computational: Collections as Data” has invited participation from “librarians, archivists, museum professionals, researchers, journalists, artists, educators, and data producers” in the development of the Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data. The Statement, framed as a “foundation that guides us all as we explore what collections as data looks like in our local environments,” was initiated during a March 2017 Institute of Museum and Library Services national forum at the University of California Santa Barbara:

The Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data provides a set of high level principles to guide collections as data work. By design, the principles are not meant to stand as concrete actions. Rather, the principles are meant to support the development of actions. From now to November 2018, the project team and current and potential partners will workshop statement principles into corresponding sets of actions in collaboration with a range of specific communities. In addition to this work, the project team is developing a Collections as Data Framework that will include among other things (1) guidelines that support persona and use case development, (2) resources for “making the case” to engage in collections as data work (3) resources for running workflow hackathons (4) and exercises that can be used to facilitate conversations about collections as data needs at conferences, institutions, and other venues as they arise.

Responses to the first round of the Statement draft are invited through summer 2017.