For decades, cultural heritage (CH) institutions have been making their digital collections available for potential communities of users. Recent advances in technology, such as machine learning, have provided a new context in which digital collections are a rich resource that can be analysed and reused by means of computational methods, for example in the humanities. Initiatives such as Collections as Data, the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable and CARE (collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility, ethics) data principles, and experimental Labs provide best practices and guidelines for publishing digital collections suitable for responsible computational use. In addition, data spaces have recently emerged as a new concept to foster creation, access and reuse of heritage data in which CH institutions play a key role as data providers. In this work we present a workflow for adopting Collections as Data in CH data spaces. The workflow has been developed in the context of the common European data space for cultural heritage and published on the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) Open Marketplace. It aims to support CH institutions, humanities researchers and computer scientists interested in making CH data available in data spaces. The article illustrates how the workflow can be adopted by CH institutions or applied by researchers wishing to publish digital collections suitable for computational use. We also demonstrate how the workflow is being adopted in the common European data space for cultural heritage, and describe a selection of potential areas that we believe will most benefit from the wide application of the workflow in the CH domain.
Transformations: A DARIAH Journal