Collections as Data: Remixing Special Collections with Digital Tools

The Digital Creativity and Cultures Hub (DCCH) at the University of Leeds is dedicated to supporting research that uses digital methods, cultural heritage collections and archives, explores digital creativity and fosters critical approaches to emergent themes and issues. 
Through an internship programme 10 undergraduates are working with the DCCH on library and cultural collections-based projects in the 2023/24 academic year. This is an exciting time as students and their mentors have begun work on designing and planning their research.
Two of the interns, Lili Jaber (English) and Samuel Yeung (Music Psychology), spoke about their work on the 'Collections (as) Data' project, developing digital approaches to working with data to offer new insights into Library collections. Lili and Sam shared their works in progress in using, interpreting and remixing the library’s Special Collections. Lili covered her work producing an AI-assisted transcription of manuscript works in the Cookery Collection and the different digital methods she is using to bring this dataset to life. Sam shared his project automating identification of locations pictured in the Godfrey Bingley Photographic Archive; and some experiments with improving AI recognition for Traditional Chinese characters in early printed books based on the University’s Chinese Collections.
The staff mentors for this project are Jodie Double (Libraries Digital Content & Copyright Manager) and Cassie Ulph, Digital Development Officer for the DCCH, who introduced and chaired the event.