Abstract

Libraries and archives are repositories not only for physical and digital resources, but for enormous amounts of data about the interactions between those resources, the systems that we use to manage them, and the human actors that use and manage them. This talk will explore the role of bibliodata – structured data about the form, content, and context of documents in any form - in Digital Humanities research. It will draw on case studies from the speaker’s recent edited collection “Library Catalogues as Data: Research Practice and Usage,” (Gooding, Terras & Ames, 2025) to outline how researchers are addressing the potential and challenges of bibliodata for research. The talk will be structured around four key areas of inquiry: methods for examining bibliodata; the politics of library data; the interdisciplinary potential of bibliodata; and practical uses and applications of catalogues as data. The talk will finish with an exploration of the potential, and challenges, for applying Artificial Intelligence to bibliodata research. In doing so, it will make the case that the bibliographic and administrative data that underpin library and archival collections are vital research resources that have been underutilised in the Digital Humanities to date, and suggest ways forward for harnessing the rich research potential of library collections and administrative data.