Clustering

What is it?

Computational methods used to prepare collection items for classification can create hundreds of individual data points alone. Alternatively, these datapoints can be clustered by algorithms or other software that uses A.I. technology to structure collections or archives into specific themes that the A.I. identifies through machine learning (Anderson, 2021). These themes which the computer identifies are useful to librarians, archivists, and researchers because they offer an opportunity to present the collection differently according to objective, unbiased similarities between resources. The clustering method is one method of identifying similarities between resources in a collection that can also be used to find specific pathways between items using data to create graphs that can be formulated by an algorithm to tell a story (Gallagher, 2019).

The major downside to the clustering method of identifying materials is that machine learning does not allow the A.I. to understand the context of each item (Coll Ardanuy et. al, 2020). In order to understand the context of such articles within a collection or alone, the artificial intelligence would need to be animate, which by definition is more nuanced than simply deciding if the A.I. is “inanimate” or “animate”, as complex A.I. exists within a spectrum of animacy where parameters include individuality, recognizing agency, and the ability to possess empathy (Coll Ardanuy et. al, 2020).

References

Anderson, B. G. (2021). On constructing a scientific archives network: Exploring computational approaches to the cybernetics thought collective. Archivaria, 91(91), 104-147. doi:10.7202/1078467ar

Coll Ardanuy, M., Nanni, F., Beelen, K., Hosseini, K., Ahnert, R., Lawrence, J., McDonough, K., et al. Living Machines: A study of atypical animacy. Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.63006

Gallagher, L. (2019, September 5). Finding Image Pathways [web log]. Retrieved from https://stacks.wellcomecollection.org/finding-image-pathways-12d31ae347f9.