Page 163 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese edition of
Journal of Library Science in China
2018 Vol.44

No.1

Smart data from libraries, archives and museums and its role in the digital
humanity researches
ZENG Marcia Lei〇, WANG Xiaoguang & FAN Wei
〇a*

Along with the rapid development of “Big Data” in recent years, an important yet lesser-
known concept “Smart Data” has also emerged. In the context of the multiple “V”s of Big Data
(Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity, and Value), the realization of the last “V”, Value, depends
on “Smart Data”, i.e., the ability to achieve big insights from trusted, contextualized, relevant,
cognitive, predictive, and consumable data at any scale, great or small. This paper first explains
the rationale, definition and connotation of the concept of Smart Data through the results obtained
from literature review and case studies, while exploring the current approaches according to the
content of the Smart Data Conference held in the U.S. in recent years. Smart Data provides value
by dealing with challenges posed by the volume, velocity, variety and veracity of big data (and
resulting actionable information), as well as by improving decision making. Smart Data represents
the way in which different data sources (including Big Data) are brought together, correlated and
contextualized, analyzed and interpreted, in order to feed decision-making and action processes.
Furthermore, this paper presents the research fields, resources, and methods collected from the
documents of American and European digital humanities research projects in the past seven years,
alongside the topics and academic domains of the contributions and presentations at the previous
five international Digital Humanities conferences. It reveals how the digital humanities have
embodied Smart Data and Big Data concepts and approaches, which demonstrates an emerging
and significant change in terms of methodology. The evidence indicates that: Smart Data has been,
and will continue to be, playing a gigantic role in the field of digital humanities; the data resources
owned by libraries, archives and museums (LAMs) are invaluable in all research areas, especially
the digital humanities, in the data age. Consequently, this paper assesses the relationship between
the fields of digital humanities and libraries, and the relationship between digital humanity research

∗ Correspondence should be addressed to ZENG Marcia Lei, Email: mzeng@kent.edu, ORCID: 0000-0003-0151-5156