Technical Resources & Implementation Guide
A practical reference for computational researchers and artists working with digitized collections.
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not to be used as nor considered to be legal advice.
Key Concepts
Open Data
Data that is freely available for anyone to use, modify, and share
FAIR Principles Guide- Free to access, use, modify, and share
- Machine-readable formats (JSON, CSV, XML)
- Clear licensing (usually CC0)
Public Domain
Works with no copyright restrictions, free for any use worldwide
Public Domain Calculator- No copyright restrictions
- Free for any use worldwide
- Includes pre-1929 US works + CC0
Open Access
Content freely available to read online, may have reuse restrictions
Further reading:
Comprehensive list of academic repositories
Example of open access repository
- Free to read/view online
- May have reuse restrictions
FAIR Data
Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable data principles
FAIR Implementation Guide- Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable
- May require authentication
- Not necessarily free/open
Digital Humanities
Interdisciplinary field combining computational methods with humanities research, exploring culture and history through technology.
- Computational analysis of texts, images, and artifacts
- Tools: text analysis, network analysis, GIS, visualization
- Focuses on critical examination of digital methods
Computational Art
Artistic practice using algorithms, code, and computational processes to create generative, interactive, and data-driven artworks.
Further reading:
Comprehensive collection of tools, techniques, and references
Platform showcasing computational art and design projects
Open-source software and community for visual arts coding
Creative coding community with thousands of sketches
Platform for on-chain generative art projects
- Generative systems: algorithms that create unique outputs
- Tools: Processing, p5.js, openFrameworks, TouchDesigner, Max/MSP
- Data visualization, machine learning art, algorithmic composition
- Historical context: Vera Molnár, Frieder Nake, Harold Cohen
Major Collections with APIs
Smithsonian Open Access
4.5M+ CC0 images from 19 museums and archives
RESTful API with comprehensive documentation
Terms of use and licensing information
Harvard Art Museums
250K+ objects with detailed metadata and images
Free API key required for access
AI-powered collection exploration and research tools
Comprehensive object, person, and exhibition data
Europeana
50M+ items from European cultural institutions
Search, Record, Entity, and Annotation APIs
Aggregated metadata from 4000+ institutions
Internet Archive
Books, images, audio, video, and software
Bulk access and streaming available
Wayback Machine and digital lending library
Library of Congress
Millions of digitized items from US national library
JSON/XML endpoints for collections
Browse curated digital collections
Digital Public Library of America
Aggregated metadata from 4000+ US institutions
Bulk downloads and API access
Unified search across partner collections
Metropolitan Museum of Art
470K+ objects with CC0 images
RESTful API with object and department data
British Library
1M+ images on Flickr Commons
IIIF manifests available for many items
Yale Collections
250K+ objects from multiple Yale museums
LUX unified collections platform
Cooper Hewitt
Design museum with extensive API
Object, person, and exhibition endpoints
IIIF Resources
What is IIIF?
Standard APIs for delivering and manipulating images. Enables cross-institutional image comparison, annotation, and deep zoom.
Core Specifications
Standardized image delivery with region, size, rotation, quality, and format parameters
Describes structure and layout of complex digital objects with metadata and viewing hints
Workflow for access-controlled resources with login and token services
Full-text search within IIIF resources with annotation-based results
Learning Resources
Practical recipes for common IIIF implementation patterns and use cases
Curated list of IIIF tools, libraries, servers, and community resources
Workshops, tutorials, and educational content for learning IIIF
Viewers
Advanced viewer with workspace, annotations, and comparison features
Embeddable viewer supporting images, audio, video, and 3D content
High-performance deep zoom viewer for large images with smooth navigation
Lightweight viewer focused on storytelling with annotations and narratives
Image Servers
High-performance Java image server with dynamic processing and caching
Fast C++ server optimized for streaming large multi-resolution images
Python-based image server with flexible configuration and caching options
Image API
Full specification
Implementation requirements
Sample API calls
Presentation API
Full specification
Implementation requirements
Sample manifest files
Find IIIF Content
IIIF Resources
Python Libraries
IIIF
- iiif-prezi3: Presentation API implementation
- iiif-prezi: Legacy Presentation API
- piffle: Django integration for IIIF
Image Processing
- Pillow: Basic image operations
- opencv-python: Computer vision
- scikit-image: Image processing algorithms
- imageio: Reading/writing formats
Computer Vision & ML
- timm: Pre-trained vision models
- torchvision: PyTorch vision utilities
- transformers: Hugging Face models (CLIP, ViT)
- sentence-transformers: Embeddings
- faiss: Similarity search
Metadata & Text
- pandas: Data manipulation
- rdflib: RDF and SPARQL
- spaCy: NLP and entity extraction
- beautifulsoup4: HTML/XML parsing
- xmltodict: XML to Python dicts
Network Analysis
- networkx: Graph algorithms
- igraph: Fast graph library
- pyvis: Interactive visualizations
Visualization
- matplotlib: Standard plotting
- seaborn: Statistical visualizations
- plotly: Interactive charts
- altair: Declarative visualizations
Data Cleaning Tools
OpenRefine
Free, open-source tool for working with messy data: cleaning, transforming, and extending datasets with web services and external data.
Regular Expressions
- • regex101.com - Test patterns
- • Python re documentation
- • Regex tutorial
Authority Reconciliation
Visualization Tools
Network Graphs
Text Analysis
Data Viz
Timeline Tools
Copyright & Licensing
US Copyright Office
- Circular 15a - Copyright duration guide
- Fair Use Index - Case law database
- Compendium - Registration procedures
Creative Commons
- License chooser - Find the right CC license
- Legal code - Full license text
- FAQ - Common questions answered
- Best practices (attribution) - How to properly credit
- CC Search - Find CC-licensed content
Rights Statements
- Full vocabulary - Standardized rights labels
- Implementation guide - How to use rights statements
Fair Use Resources
Public Domain
- Public Domain Calculator - Determine copyright status
- Copyright term chart - Duration reference
- Europeana guide - European perspective
Metadata Standards
Dublin Core
Simple metadata standard for describing resources
Complete list of metadata terms
Detailed term definitions
CIDOC-CRM (museum data)
Conceptual reference model for cultural heritage
Official CIDOC-CRM documentation
Getting started guide
BIBFRAME (bibliographic)
Library of Congress bibliographic framework
Introduction to BIBFRAME
Technical documentation
EAD (archival)
Encoded Archival Description for finding aids
EAD homepage and resources
Latest version documentation
Schema.org
Structured data vocabulary for web content
Complete schema reference
Specialized terms for cultural content
SKOS (knowledge organization)
Simple Knowledge Organization System for taxonomies
Official W3C specification
Indigenous Data Governance
Traditional Knowledge Labels
CARE Principles
Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics
Text and Data Mining (TDM)
HathiTrust Research Center
17M+ volumes for computational analysis
Access the HathiTrust Research Center portal
Computational analysis tools and workflows
Project Gutenberg
70K+ free ebooks
Browse and download free ebooks
Download entire catalog for offline use
Chronicling America (newspapers)
US newspapers 1777-1963
Spatial Humanities
GeoNames
Gazetteer with 25M+ place names
World Historical Gazetteer
Places across all time periods
Pleiades (ancient world)
Ancient places and spaces
Research Data Repositories
Scholarly Resources
Journals
Organizations
Key Readings
Introductions
Gold, Matthew K. and Lauren F. Klein, eds. Debates in the Digital Humanities series (open access): dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu
Methods
- • Jockers, Matthew. Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History. 2013.
- • Moretti, Franco. Distant Reading. 2013.
- • Drucker, Johanna. "Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display." DHQ 5.1 (2011): Link
Critical Perspectives
- • D'Ignazio, Catherine and Lauren F. Klein. Data Feminism (open access): data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu
- • Risam, Roopika. New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities. 2018.
- • Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression. 2018.