Forget huge, slow, centralised infrastructure: small and portable is the name of the data game. Digitised collections are highly distributed, with ownership and care shared out amongst stakeholders. Shared infrastructure investment is primarily based on capacity to combine and package up ‘just in time’ datasets, with no query too specific. The surprise hit streaming documentary “A History of Buttons in the Northeast” involved several iterations of these portable datasets, becoming more precise as important discoveries were made. The “modesty turn” in the humanities made the importance of these specific histories more apparent, with the newest generation of digital scholars trained on principles of terroir, eccentricity and humility. Datasets are stored locally by those who requested them, and occasionally shared, swapped or openly licensed, but more often simply filed away.
Links
Infrastructure Futures for Digital Cultural Heritage (project page)