# Cultural Data Hackathon

In October 2020 Goethe Institut and Credipple host a cultural data hackathon [#HackUrCulture](https://twitter.com/hashtag/hackurculture) to work on [new digital engagement ideas](https://hackurculture.netlify.app/) for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM). This page summarises some of the resources identified with @PolicyActionZA to support this event.

## Cultural and heritage data sources in South Africa

We've moved these to a separate working page [here](https://opendataza.gitbook.io/toolkit/open-data-resources/cultural-and-heritage-data-resources).

## Examples of cultural and heritage data reuse

There are some examples of what can be done with open cultural data, mostly from the US (but please [Tweet us](https://twitter.com/OpenDataZA) about others if you have seen them).

[Map a trip](http://publicdomain.nypl.org/greenbook-map/trip.html) using the New York Public Library (NYPL) Green Book items

![Navigating the Green Book at NYPL](https://713906002-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-LD_JXmK-On6DnxCOASD%2F-MHoTHTKw08XIe8rIkW2%2F-MHoWXMg0JbfQ_tA8tgY%2FScreenshot%202020-09-21%20at%2017.39.14.png?alt=media\&token=0e730c35-dba4-49bd-8a3c-30a0703e85f1)

[Southern Mosaic](https://labs.loc.gov/work/experiments/southern-mosaic/) is a visual story using data from the US Library of Congress

![Southern Mosaic visualisation of artist locations and titles](https://713906002-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-LD_JXmK-On6DnxCOASD%2F-MHoTHTKw08XIe8rIkW2%2F-MHoX4KclQkkKAfE04JG%2FScreenshot%202020-09-21%20at%2017.47.09.png?alt=media\&token=df8eb3c4-598d-4c7c-8562-755c292139f3)

Also by the New York Public Library, a [visual grouping](http://publicdomain.nypl.org/pd-visualization/) of 180,000+ public domain items

[The Met](https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/the-metropolitan-museum-of-art?col=RGB_518077) has collaborated with Google to enable searching of archives using colour

A [visual timeline](https://harvardart.askewbrook.com/) of the Harvard Art Museum collection

## Tools to try

For visualisation, there are many to try out like [Flourish](https://flourish.studio/) and [Datawrapper](https://www.datawrapper.de/). If you're more technical and using Python or R, have a look at this [summary of libraries](https://towardsdatascience.com/top-9-libraries-for-data-visualization-in-python-and-r-51bdf08e5d54).

Have a look at these storytelling [tools from Knightlab](https://knightlab.northwestern.edu/projects/) including Timeline, StoryMap, Soundcite and Juxtapose.

For mapping relationships or networks as a story try [GraphCommons](https://graphcommons.com/), see [this example](https://graphcommons.com/stories/8de49ba6-68b4-4d8b-af6b-6336e7520742/slides/2) of three musicians in a recording ecosystem. [Kumu](https://kumu.io/) is also popular for network visualisation.

For mapping, something like [Kepler](https://kepler.gl/) is easier to use. For more detail on working with spatial data see [this page](https://opendataza.gitbook.io/toolkit/open-data-resources/working-with-spatial-data).

If you want to get data tables out of PDFs you can try [Tabula](https://tabula.technology/). [OpenRefine](https://openrefine.org/) is good for cleaning data.

If you want to analyse text in books or articles (e.g. to identify people and places) there are lots of tools to try like [TextRazor](https://www.textrazor.com/demo), [Intellexer](http://demo.intellexer.com/) and [Google's Natural Language](https://cloud.google.com/natural-language).

## Additional reading

[Exploring Arts Engagement with (Open) Data](https://www.timdavies.org.uk/2019/02/18/exploring-arts-engagement-with-open-data/) by Tim Davies

[Open cultural data: Curating GLAM in the digital age](https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2020/08/02/open-cultural-data-curating-glam-in-the-digital-age.html) in the Jakarta Post

[Data as Culture](http://culture.theodi.org/) with ODI

[A Nerd’s Guide To The 2,229 Paintings At MoMA](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-nerds-guide-to-the-2229-paintings-at-moma/) and the [data on Github](https://github.com/MuseumofModernArt)

[How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Open Data: A Case Study in the Harvard Art Museums’ API](https://medium.com/@andrea_ledesma/how-we-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-open-data-a-case-study-in-the-harvard-art-museums-api-893c3f40ecb7) by Harvard Art Museum

A list of '[Cool stuff made with cultural heritage APIs](http://museum-api.pbworks.com/w/page/21933412/Cool%20stuff%20made%20with%20cultural%20heritage%20APIs)' 

120kMoMA - [A data visualization study of The Museum of Modern Art collection dataset of 123,919 records](https://medium.com/@WallHelen/120kmoma-ae298a2a57b7)

[Using Public Domain Materials in the Classroom](https://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/01/20/public-domain-in-the-classroom) by New York Public Library

Blog on [how people have used MoMA’s data so far](https://medium.com/@foe/here-s-a-roundup-of-how-people-have-used-our-data-so-far-80862e4ce220)