Using Data Analytics and Network Visualisation to Inform Future Collecting and Research Practice in Hybrid Literary Archives (Coleridge Fellowship)

Using Data Analytics and Network Visualisation to Inform Future Collecting and Research Practice in Hybrid Literary Archives (Coleridge Fellowship)

This collection contains the outputs for a project funded by a Coleridge Research Fellowship at the British Library. This pilot project uses data analytics in Python and network analysis in Gephi to interrogate the ways in which digital and analogue correspondence files (letters and e-mails) function within the Archive of Harold Pinter; reflecting upon what these patterns might mean for archivists, curators and researchers working with hybrid correspondence collections. The work was completed part-time over a six month period (September 2022-March 2023) by the Principal Investigator, Callum McKean (Lead Curator of Born Digital Archives and Manuscripts at the British Library) and the Project Assistant, Cameron Randall (Manuscripts Cataloguer).
Collection Details
Creator
Mckean, Callum
Language
English
Keywords

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    Item type:Journal article,
    Data Analysis and Network Visualisation as Tools for Curating Hybrid Correspondence Archives
    (2023-08-11)
    Mckean, Callum
    This pilot project uses data analytics in Python and network analysis in Gephi to interrogate the ways in which digital and analogue correspondence files (letters and e-mails) function within the Archive of Harold Pinter; reflecting upon what these patterns might mean for archivists, curators and researchers working with hybrid correspondence collections.
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    Item type:Software,
    Hybrid Correspondence Network Processing Script
    (2023-08-11)
    Mckean, Callum
    The Python code was developed to to interrogate the ways in which digital and analogue correspondence files (letters and e-mails) function within the Archive of Harold Pinter; reflecting upon what these patterns might mean for archivists, curators and researchers working with hybrid correspondence collections. This code is collection agnostic and its outputs are compliant with General Data Protection Regulation in the UK, meaning that interested parties at any collecting repository working with born digital or hybrid archives will be able to re-use the code for their own purposes and that the outputs can be shared within the sector and amongst the wider research community.
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    Item type:Journal article,
    Data analysis and network visualisation as tools for curating hybrid correspondence archives
    (2025-02-18)
    McKean, Callum
    ;
    Randall, Cameron
    The Harold Pinter Archive at the British Library contains correspondence dating from 1977 to 2008, including his e-mail archive. In total, the correspondence strand of the archive contains c.20,000 paper letters and c.3500 e-mails. This project used data analytics (in Python) and network visualisation (in Gephi) to interrogate the ways in which digital and analogue correspondence function together within Pinter’s literary archive. The attendant paper reflects upon what this analysis might mean for archivists, curators and researchers working with hybrid correspondence collections in the context of Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence based research methodologies. The paper includes an analysis of what an email is both materially and functionally—what are its constituent parts and in what ways is it like and unlike a physical letter, as well as a discussion of how we can leverage the highly structured nature of e-mail data to our advantage using computational techniques, and the limitations of these approaches to socalled “dark archives”. Network visualisations are used to represent correspondence visually in order to shed light on the activities it represents; particularly literary collaboration and administration. The paper concludes with an attempt to draw conclusions from these analyses and to think about their implications for repositories and researchers collecting and using hybrid correspondence collections. The Python code produced for the project is collection agnostic and available under a Creative Commons Licence, meaning that any collecting repository holding email archives in MBOX format can use it to extract GDPR compliant metadata from their collections and visualise them in Gephi.
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