Welcome to the Books as Art, Art as Data site index. This page was conceived of as the digital counterpart to a traditional book index, designed to facilitate browsing and discovery.  Explore the definitions and navigate to the pages that mention the topics below!

A

Artists’ Books:

Artwork in the form of a book. Artist books are a unique intersection between the world of fine art and bookbinding. They can be almost anything, from altered books to fine bindings, large sculptural objects to miniature books, scrolls to codices, and so much more.

This definition is sourced from the Center for Book Arts’ glossary
This topic is featured in: Darcy’s Project | Stephanie’s Project

B

Book Art:

A field of art which involves the creative production of books, as well as art which incorporates books, and engages with exploration of the book as an artistic product. See also: Artists’ Books

C

Center for Book Arts, The

A nonprofit gallery and studio space, located in New York, NY, dedicated to promoting artistic explorations of the book as an art object.
This topic is featured in: About the CBA | Nene’s Project | Alison’s Project

Controlled Vocabulary

A standardized list of categories, names, or titles, typically created by an authoritative body or institution. Used to facilitate finding information across a collection or the internet.
This topic is featured in: Stephanie’s Project | Stephanie’s Blog Post

CSS: (Cascading Style Sheets)

A programming language used to change and design the look of web pages, such as fonts and colors as well as add interactivity. See also: HTML.
This topic is featured in: Alison’s Blog Post | Alison’s Project

CSV (Comma Separated Values)

A spreadsheet file format in which data fields are separated by commas. Unlike XLSX, a file format used by Excel, it can be opened by all spreadsheet software and isn’t tied to a specific program, which makes it the best format for sharing data.
This topic is featured in: Nene’s Blog Post | Darcy’s Blog Post | Alison’s Blog Post | Datasets

D

Data Transforming: (a.k.a. Data Cleaning)

The process of organizing, standardizing, and modifying data so that it can be used in data visualization projects.  This can include removing inconsistent data, fixing spelling errors, sorting terms into categories.
This topic is featured in: Stephanie’s Blog Post

Data Visualization:

A visual representation of information and data through graphics. Examples include bar charts, timelines, pie charts, and maps.
This topic is featured in: Alison’s Project | Stephanie’s Project | Darcy’s Project | Alison’s Blog Post

Digital Humanities:

A field of study that uses technology to explore the human experience.
This topic is featured in: About the Process Blog | Maddy’s Project

Domain Name:

The unique address for a website on the internet (such as, https://studentwork.prattsi.org/bookarts/). In order to ensure that a website remains available, the domain name must be annually registered and paid for.
This topic is featured in: Maddy’s Blog Post

E

Exhibitions:

This topic is featured in: Nene’s Project | Alison’s Project

F

Flourish:

A web-based software that can be used to create data visualizations.
This topic is featured in: Stephanie’s Blog Post | Stephanie’s Project

G

Gephi:

A software often used to create network visualizations. See network visualization.
This topic is featured in: Alison’s Project | Alison’s Blog Post | Darcy’s Project | Darcy’s Blog Post

GitHub:

A platform which is often used by digital projects to host, share, and collaboratively edit code or data.
This topic is featured in: Alison’s Project | Alison’s Blog Post

H

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language):

A programming language that sets the structure and content for a web page.  It is the backbone of the majority of websites.
This topic is featured in: Alison’s Project | Alison’s Blog Post

J

JavaScript:

A programming language that is used to add interactivity to websites.
This topic is featured in: Alison’s Project | Alison’s Blog Post

M

Metadata:

Structured information which describes individual items or concepts.  Used to facilitate finding, filtering, and organizing information.
This topic is featured in: Darcy’s Project | Stephanie’s Project

N

Network Visualization:

A type of data visualization that is used to highlight relationships and connections between entities.
This topic is featured in: Darcy’s Blog Post | Alison’s Blog Post

New York City:

This topic is featured in: Nene’s Project | About the CBA

O

Ontology:

A structure which is used to represent knowledge about a particular topic.  They represent, name, and define categories for concepts, and entities which are related to the shared field or inquiry.
This topic is featured in: Stephanie’s Project | Stephanie’s Blog Post

P

Python:

A programming language used to automate a variety of tasks, typically related to computational analysis.
This topic is featured in: Darcy’s Blog Post | Alison’s Blog Post

V

Voyant:

An online text analysis tool, which allows users to upload a small number of text files, and generates a series of data visualizations to explore topics and the groupings of words in the text.
This topic is featured in: Darcy’s Blog Post | Process Zine

W

Web scraping:

The process of using software or a scripting language to extract data from websites.
This topic is featured in: Darcy Blog Post | Darcy project page

Web Server:

A specialized computer that stores software and the files which are used to create a website.  A necessary component of the exchange of files and access of information across the internet.
This topic is featured in: Maddy’s Blog Post

WordPress:

A popular platform for building and managing websites.
This topic is featured in: Maddy’s Blog Post | Maddy’s Project Page

Z

Zines:

Small booklets that are used to disseminate information usually related to a single topic, issue, or political or social movement. They are usually produced in a fast and inexpensive way to make them accessible to the most people possible.

This definition is sourced from the Center for Book Arts’ glossary
This topic is featured in: Darcy’s Project | Stephanie’s Project | Process Zine

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The Books as Art, Art as Data Index was written by Maddy Casey, with input from collaborators across the team. Edited by Claudia Berger.

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Curious about any of the terms used on this page?
Check out our site index which includes basic definitions of some of the concepts we reference.