DSCI/LIB 350M: Humanities Research Data Management
Fall 2025
This course provides students with theoretical and practical experience in collecting, processing, archiving, and publishing humanities data (images, video, sound, text, maps, etc.) gathered from galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs). With the goal of building thematic digital collections as researchers, students learn digital methodologies focusing on the technical, legal, ethical, and social aspects of working with humanities research data throughout its curation lifecycle. This includes hands-on experience finding, assessing, organizing, and reformatting data; creating and remediating descriptive metadata; evaluating and determining copyright and licensing; writing a data management plan using the standards set by the National Endowment for the Humanities; and sharing thematic research digital collections using GitHub and the open-source platform CollectionBuilder.
- Zoe Tomlinson - Project Manager
- Calista Gerard - Repository Manager
- Jonathan Swenson - Metadata Manager
- Lili Millet - Object Preservation Manager
- Ben Fitzhugh - Collection Development Manager
Visit our collection: https://libdsci350m-fall25.github.io/group1/
Title: Queer Vaudeville Performance Archive
Date Range: 1870-1934
Description: This digital collection documents early representations of queer identities in popular entertainment through photographs, postcards, and sheet music of male and female impersonators from the vaudeville era. The collection focuses on performers who achieved notable success during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States and United Kingdom, including Julian Eltinge, Karyl Norman, Bert Savoy, Vesta Tilley, Bothwell Browne, Della Fox, Bert Errol, and Ella Wesner. The collection includes 21 digital objects curated from multiple GLAM repositories, including the Digital Transgender Archive, the New York Public Library Digital Collections, University of Arizona Special Collections, University of Utah Digital Library, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Queer Music Heritage Archive. Our goal is to create a cohesive portrayal of performers who defined their era and contributed to the visibility of queer expression in mainstream culture, reclaiming narratives that dominant institutions attempted to silence.
Vaudevillian impersonation was popular and influential entertainment from the late 1800s through the early 1930s. While gender performance had older theatrical roots, vaudeville transformed it into a mainstream stage specialty. Male impersonators (women performing masculinity) and female impersonators (men performing femininity) achieved extraordinary fame and commercial success, performing for presidents and royalty, commanding top billing, and appearing on countless promotional materials. By the mid-1930s, this visibility abruptly ended. Laws, ordinances, and police actions explicitly targeted impersonators, and the 1934 Production Code effectively banned gender-nonconforming characters from film. This collection documents a brief historical moment of mainstream queer visibility before systematic erasure began.
This project follows comprehensive data management best practices to ensure long-term preservation, accessibility, and ethical stewardship of our digital collection. Our data management approach includes:
- Metadata Standards: 21 fields following Dublin Core and CollectionBuilder requirements, documented in a comprehensive Metadata Application Profile
- Controlled Vocabularies: RightsStatements.org URIs, Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, DCMI Type Vocabulary, and project-specific authority lists
- Storage & Backup: Three-tier redundant storage across Google Drive, GitHub, and local backups
- Rights & Licensing: All objects documented with standardized rights statements; original content licensed under CC BY 4.0
- Accessibility: Alt text for all images, no authentication barriers, free public access
- Preservation: Committed to one-year maintenance through December 2026, with static site architecture enabling indefinite access
View our complete Data Management Plan: https://libdsci350m-fall25.github.io/group1/dmp.html
Platform: CollectionBuilder-CSV
Hosting: GitHub Pages
Metadata Format: CSV with 21 fields
Object Format: JPEG images
Total Objects: 21
Collection Size: Approximately 50-70 MB
All digital objects follow a standardized naming pattern:
performername_archiveabbreviation_objecttype_briefdescription_year.jpg
Example: karylnorman_nypl_postcard_portrait_1915.jpg
Digital Objects: Historical materials (circa 1870-1930) with rights status documented using RightsStatements.org URIs:
- 18 objects: Copyright Undetermined, due to age of objects
- 3 objects: No Copyright - United States Original Content: Our metadata, documentation, and data dictionary are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, redistribute, and adapt these materials with attribution. CollectionBuilder Code: Open-source MIT License
We gratefully acknowledge the institutions that digitized and provided access to these materials:
- Digital Transgender Archive
- New York Public Library Digital Collections
- University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections
- University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Digital Library
- Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
- Queer Music Heritage Archive
We honor the performers documented in this collection for their artistry, courage, and contributions to LGBTQ+ cultural history.
For questions about this collection or to request editing access to project files, please contact the repository administrators through the GitHub repository.
Last Updated: December 2025