ABSTRACT
Legacy data is material shaped by someone else and preserved for future use or re-use. Permissions to use the data and considerations of privacy and intellectual property are essential. Many cultural institutions have back-end collections or administrative management systems that were custom built or created in platforms or programs that no longer exist or are not supported. The multiple volumes of “debates” and “companions” in the field of digital humanities testify to the ongoing vitality of discussion around critical issues. More recently, questions of whiteness and diversity among practitioners, hegemonic values imprinted in technological systems, practices of inclusivity and exclusivity in access, and expertise across a range of communities have become current topics within the field. In many ways, the core of digital work remains the task of modeling—of thinking about how the abstraction of complex or ambiguous analog artifacts experienced within an interpretative activity can be effected in an ethical and self-conscious manner.
