One of the things I do professionally is helping researchers organise and preserve their data. This can involve thinking through the best formats to use to represent their data and helping them understand how different software interprets those formats. This can be a particularly thorny issue when it comes to date formats, especially in the case of the very commonly used software, Microsoft Excel. But date formats aren't even the half of it when we start thinking about the cultural complexities of communicating and interpreting different systems for thinking about and encoding time.

One way patrons can explore GLAM collections is through the digital content that institutions make available as data. I have often heard (white, men) data scientists speak of this type of exploration in terms such as “playing with the data.” It is in this context that GLAM institutions must be particularly mindful that not all of the material we hold is appropriate for being converted into data to be played with.

Over on Queeries and Clareification, Clare has been reflecting on their queer career. It got me thinking about my own pathway into the work I do now and how that's been affected by my own experiences of gender and sexuality.