Facet Publishing announces the publication of Open Heritage Data: An introduction to research, publishing and programming with open data in the heritage sector by Henriette Roued-Cunliffe.

Digital heritage can be many things, from building a database over Egyptian textiles to interacting with family historians over Facebook. However, it is rare to see professionals with a heritage background working practically with the heritage datasets in their charge. Many institutions who have the resources to do so, leave this work to computer programmers, missing the opportunity to share their knowledge and passion for heritage through innovative technology.

Open Heritage Data: An introduction to research, publishing and programming with open data in the heritage sector has been written with practitioners, researchers and students working in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector in mind. This book combines current research in open data with the author’s extensive experience in coding and teaching coding, to provide a step-by-step guide to working actively with the increasing amounts of data.

For those who do not have a computer science background, but who want to work more confidently with heritage data, this text serves as an introduction to open data as a next step in heritage mediation. Readers will be provided with an Open Heritage Data Model and an overview of the laws most relevant to open heritage data. In addition, the use and reuse of open heritage data, and how institutions publish it, are explored.

Featuring sample code, case examples from around the world and step-by-step technical tutorials visualizing and combining heritage datasets, this book will be a key resource for anyone in the GLAM sector involved in, or who wants to be involved in creating, publishing, using and reusing open heritage data.

Henriette Roued-Cunliffe said of the text: ‘It is my hope that this book will illustrate how working with heritage data in an open manner is both achievable for those with a humanities background and too important to be left to computer scientists alone.'

Henriette Roued-Cunliffe is an Associate Professor in Digital Humanities at the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen. With a background in Archaeological Computing (MSc, University of Southampton) and a doctorate examining digital tools for the reading of historic texts (Ancient History, University of Oxford), her research experience is in the use of data and digital tools within heritage. Her coding experience comes from a combination of formal and autodidact learning, which she has adapted to teach digital heritage and data science in the Humanities. Alongside digital heritage, Henriette works to understand the information behaviour and online interaction of those groups who have a special interest in heritage (e.g. family historians, amateur archaeologists, community historians). She co-edited the volume Participatory Heritage (Facet 2017).

Open Heritage Data: An introduction to research, publishing and programming with open data in the heritage sector | Jun 2020 | 256pp | paperback: 9781783303595 | £64.95 | hardback: 9781783303601| £135