Woodstock Theological Library: Special Collections Analysis

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SECTION 1: PROJECT OVERVIEW

In Spring and Summer 2020, the Technical Services Department of Lauinger Library conducted a collection analysis for the Special Collections materials housed in the Woodstock Theological Library. This work involved exporting 13,421 records from the Library's online catalog for rare books and some manuscripts held in Woodstock’s Special Collections*. The exported records were converted to spreadsheet format, normalized, and enhanced using OpenRefine and Microsoft Excel, and loaded to Google Drive for shared review.

During the review process the project team realized that approximately 2,800 records did not have subject headings. This meant the most unique materials in the collection were not fully cataloged and they had the least descriptive information. The team decided to create subject headings for these items so they could be included in the subject analysis and recommend that these items be fully cataloged in the future. Analysis of the records also showed that approximately 12,000 records did not have Library of Congress call numbers. The team converted the current Dewey and accession numbers to Library of Congress call numbers in order to allow for consistent subject analysis.

To facilitate more granular analysis of publication patterns, the project team used OpenRefine to reconcile place of publication metadata (extracted from catalog records) with geographic Linked Data entities from Wikidata. This allowed the team to pull in coordinates for individual cities of publication and create interactive maps illustrating the collection’s publication trends.

Once the record enhancement work was complete, Tableau Public was used to create data visualizations for this project, which allowed for the creation of interactive charts, graphs, and maps. The data visualizations slice and dice the data in varying ways to showcase different aspects of the collection such as dates published, place of publication, publication languages, and major subject areas covered by the collection. Google Sites was used to embed the data visualizations to enable full exploration of and interaction with the data. All visualizations (maps, charts, and graphs) on this site are interactive. Users can interact with them by clicking on a portion of a map, columns and axis in graphs, pie charts, and any of the colored sections to reveal detailed information for a specific aspect such as region, century, place, language, and subject.

This collection analysis project also resulted in the creation of a subject term dataset, compiled from all of the subject headings for topics, people, groups, and places found in Woodstock’s Special Collections. We used this data to draw conclusions about the overall makeup of the collection for this report, but that data, which is very rich and highly granular, could be used for future research and analysis. For example, this dataset could be a valuable resource for digital humanities techniques such as text mining.

The team also created a downloadable report to summarize the results of the collection analysis. All chart titles in the report are hyperlinked to the interactive Tableau charts for data visualization and interaction. Please see the Appendix on the project website for more information about the data described and visualized for all charts in each section. The data in the Appendix provides detailed information about the topics covered in this report.

This site has been organized into the following sections for displaying different facets of the Woodstock rare books collection in detail from several different perspectives.

Section 1: PROJECT OVERVIEW

Section 2: PUBLICATION DATES

Chart 2.1 - Publication Date (by % of total collection)

Chart 2.2 - Century of Publication by Region

Section 3: PUBLICATION LANGUAGES

Chart 3.1 - Publication Language (by % of total collection)

Chart 3.2 - Top 6 Publication Languages by Date

Chart 3.3 - Publication Languages by Century

Section 4: PUBLICATION PLACES -- REGIONS, COUNTRIES AND CITIES

Chart 4.1 - Overarching Regions of Publication

Chart 4.2 - Map of Countries of Publication

Chart 4.3 - Density Map of Countries of Publication

Chart 4.4 - Europe by Subregion of Publication

Chart 4.5 - Europe by Country of Publication

Chart 4.6 - Map of European Countries of Publication

Chart 4.7 - Top 15 Cities of Publication

Chart 4.8 - Top 15 Cities of Publication by Century

Chart 4.9 - Map of European Cities of Publication

Chat 4.10 - Trends in Publication Places over Time - by Century

Section 5: SUBJECT AREAS (GENERAL)

Chart 5.1 - High-Level Subject Summary

Chart 5.2 - Second-Level Subjects

Chart 5.2.1 - Christian Denominations

Chart 5.2.2 - The Bible

Chart 5.2.3 - Practical and Doctrinal Theology

Geographic Subject areas

Chart 5.3 - Geographic Subjects Grouped by Region

Chart 5.4 - Geographic Subjects by Country, State, Province, etc.

Personal Names

Chart 5.5 - Top 15 Personal Name Subjects

Section 6: SUBJECT AREAS (BY PLACE & DATE OF PUBLICATION)

Subjects by Place of Publication

Chart 6.1 - Top 15 Subjects by Region of Publication

Chart 6.2 - Top 15 Subjects by Country of Publication

Subjects by Date of Publication

Chart 6.3 - Top Subjects by Publication Date

Chart 6.4 - Detailed Subjects Over Time

Subjects by Date and Place of Publication

Chart 6.5 - Top Countries of Publication by Subject and Publication Date

Chart 6.6 - % View of Top Countries of Publication by Subject and Publication Date

Chart 6.7 - Top Subjects by Place and Date of Publication

Section 7: FINAL OBSERVATIONS