Provenance¶
Definition¶
“The chronology of the origin, development, ownership, location, and changes to a system or system component and associated data [and objects and documentation]. It [should] also include personnel and processes used to interact with or make modifications to the system, component, or associated data.” These descriptions can be stored in metadata.
Definition source: NIST Computer Security Resource Centre (n.d.). provenance (accessed 19 August 2025).
Stakes¶
part of: opacity
related to: transparency
To understand the journey your data has been through, as well as understanding the context of its creation and changes, is integral to understanding the data itself and how it can serve your research.
Where does it occur in the lifecycle?¶
2 - Collection
Questions to consider throughout your work¶
- Where does your data come from? What is the context of its creation/inheritance?
Examples¶
- Digital Benin: https://digitalbenin.org/
- Looted Cultural Assets: https://www.lootedculturalassets.de/
- van Lange, Milan M. and Keijzer, Carlijn (2025) “Tracing Transformations: (Digitized) World War II Correspondence Through the Lens of the Records Continuum Model,” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies: Vol. 12, Article 4. Available at: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol12/iss1/4
- Sander Molenaar. Late Imperial China Special Issue, forthcoming publication.
Good-better-best practices¶
| Good | Better | Best |
|---|---|---|
Resources¶
- Anne Haeming, Dynarchiving: Confronting the Bias in Data.
- Reading list and tools
- Sarah Binta Alam Shoilee, Annastiina Ahola, Heikki Rantala, Eero Hyvönen, Victor de Boer, Jacco van Ossenbruggen, and Susan Legene. “Enhancing Provenance Research with Linked Data: A Visual Approach to Knowledge Discovery.” SemDH‘25: Second International Workshop of Semantic Digital Humanities, June 1-2 2025, Portoroz, Slovenia. https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/publications/2025/shoilee-et-al-pm-sampo-2025.pdf
- Katja Kaiser, Catarina Madruga: Tagging Objects from Colonial Contexts. A Decision Tree for Natural History Collections: https://doi.org/10.25360/01-2024-00005
This bias type has been inspired by Anne Haeming’s approach to archival silences and biases: dynarchiving.