Digital Humanities: Digital collections

Digital collections are online databases of digital objects. These can contain a variety of formats, such as images, text, audio or video, and can either be "born digital" or digitised. In addition, digital collections may have some form of function to search, retrieve and organise content. 

You may consider making a digital collection to make material accessible, either for people or machines; to preserve collections; or to use for analysis in your research. 

• Digital archives
  • Digital archives contain digital objects for preservation, storage and/or access. These may include born digital and digitised objects.
• Digital libraries
  • Digital libraries are databases consisting of collections of digital objects accessed through a search interface. It could also be a digital collection, or a database providing records of digital and material resources.
• Databases
  • Databases are organised collections of information or data, and interfaces for managing and retrieving this information.
• Digital publication
  • Digital publication refers to the publishing of content in digital formats that are accessed on electronic devices and on the internet.
• Text corpora
  • Text corpora are large sets of texts guided by a focus/source/purpose, upon which study and analysis can be performed.
• Digital repositories
  • A digital repository provides a number of functions, such as acquiring, storing, preserving and accessing digital content. They typically allow a user to access digital collections that have a particular relevance to a institution or organisation.

• Digitisation
  • Converting objects in a physical format to a digital format. For more information, check out our Digitisation page. 
• Metadata
  • Having well described records for digital items can help with searching and accessing items. 
    • Items that are digitsed may only need to have their information copied.
    • Born digital items may require you to create a metadata record from scratch.
  • More information about metadata is available on our page about describing digital content.
• Digital preservation
  • Digital preservation aims to ensure that digital collections are accessible and usable in the long term. This involves planning and using preservation methods and technologies to ensure that collections can always be accessed, regardless of media failure or changes to technology

Tools:

• Omeka
  • Omeka is a Content Management System (CMS) for online digital archives or collections. It's a free and open source web application.
  • Used by researcher Niamh Moore to create the archive Clayoquot Lives: an Ecofeminist Story Web.
• Edition Visualization Technology (EVT)
  • An open source tool for digital publishing that enables XML-encoded texts to be converted to digital editions. These editions can be explored in a user friendly way.
  • Used to create the Digital Vercelli Book.

• Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model
  • Developed for use in facilitating a broad, discipline-independent consensus on the requirements for an archive or repository to provide long-term preservation of digital information.
• Trusted Digital Repository Checklist
  • An international standard for judging a digital repository with respect to its administration, policy, object handling, and technology.

• PARADISEC
  • A digital archive of materials from endangered cultures from all over the world.
• Australian Poetry Library
  • A digital library of Australian poetry.
• Translator Database
  • A database of translators in 19th century Ireland.
• The University of Sydney Library's Digital Collections 
  • Explore the Library's digital collections, including historical issues of Hermes and Frontiers of Science, as well as rare books and manuscripts. 
• Australian National Corpus
  • The Australian National Corpus is a discovery service that collates and provides access to assorted examples of Australian English text, transcriptions, audio and audio-visual materials.
• Trove (National Library of Australia)
  • Online library database aggregator that provides access to a number of digital collections from Australian libraries and insitutions.