In a new blog post researchers Giorgia Tolfo and Katherine Howells reflect on their recent project focusing on the metadata in the National Archives's photographic copyright collections (COPY1). They look at the opportunities and challenges of collaborative digital experimentation.
As a result of this copyright registration system, in COPY 1 there are over 133,000 individual entry forms containing this valuable and fascinating information. Crucially, through the hard work of volunteers over several years, the entry forms for the registration of photographs have been fully transcribed into Discovery, making this rich metadata available to researchers.
Since this metadata has been made available on Discovery, researchers have been able to search the information using keywords. However, for a long time we have recognised that the research potential of this information goes much deeper than enabling simple keyword searching. Through the wide range of digital methods of data analysis available to us now, there could be many more opportunities to use this metadata to illuminate historical trends, surface new and little-known stories and much more. To invite new perspectives on how we could maximise the potential of this metadata, we have now released the full dataset on GitHub. Researchers can download it freely and experiment with it.
Read the full blog post here: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blogs/research-projects/developing-an-enhanced-dataset-for-the-history-of-photography/
Images: COPY1 records for P H Emerson's Gathering Water Lillies / The National Archives, Kew
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