Posted August 27, 2025 by L.P. Coladangelo, DS Catalog Project and Data Manager
One of the questions the team of the Mapping Manuscript Migrations (MMM) project wished to ask was about measuring the “popularity” of certain texts as evidenced in manuscripts of a given time period (i.e., “What was the most popular text by a medieval author in France in the seventeenth century?”) which they recognized as a computationally ambiguous inquiry (Koho et al., 2022). Given that MMM was an influential technical and conceptual predecessor to the redeveloped DS Catalog, the psychic pull of this question is no less intriguing even if the ambiguity of what it means to define and measure “popularity” is still unresolved. However, as existing data enter new contexts, we can begin to ask new and different questions motivated by the novel interactions that occur through recontextualization and reuse.
Such is the case with the DS Catalog, which has received institutional member data about manuscript holdings since December 2022 and has tracked user statistics for the DS Catalog search site since June 2024. During the past year, over 30,000 users have made some contact and connection to the over 27,500 records to which the DS Catalog has grown, fueled by influxes of new, up-to-date data contributed and supported by DS members. While DS as an organization still has room to grow to boast maintenance of a truly national union catalog for premodern and early modern manuscripts from global cultures, we can still take stock of what aggregated, harmonized, enriched, and transformed data can do and what new questions can be asked and answered of this information.
One topic that is of interest to existing and prospective members alike is the “popularity” of their items as represented in the DS Catalog, including the ways the DS Catalog provides expanded access and federated discoverability to their manuscript collections. While member institutions are committed to being a part of DS because they champion free and open access to their data, they can also be encouraged that collective participation and support in the DS Catalog adds value to their existing data by placing it in new contexts of use. Because we can provide usage statistics about what items are viewed by DS Catalog users, member institutions can now integrate knowledge of digital usership to make more informed decisions about how to manage and promote items in their collections. DS members can also have confidence that their investment in the work of the DS consortium yields measurable returns in scholarly and public interest.
To that end, DS will now be periodically publishing usage information, alongside other user statistics and reports, which combines data from two sources: Google Analytics and the DS Catalog. Google Analytics provides data about which pages (that is, manuscript records) are utilized, including duration of use, number of views, and user interactions. That information is cross referenced with metadata from DS records to indicate which items were viewed, from which institutions, and the dates records were ingested and updated in the DS Catalog. This first report (published here) shows these combined and aggregated statistics captured from June 1, 2024 to August 22, 2025. As time goes on, we will continue to report on cumulative statistics, especially as new records are added to the DS Catalog. We will also be able to generate specific reports on demand to help members with their own organizational and curatorial decision making.
While we may not be able to fully define which manuscripts in North American collections are the “most popular” among researchers and the public, we can at least come closer to understanding how digital platforms, increased access, and value-enhancement projects like the DS Catalog help make manuscripts more discoverable in disparate collections. We can also take note of which items, at least statistically, have captured the attention of our global audience, proving the efficacy and usefulness of their presence in the DS Catalog.
References
Koho, M., Burrows, T., Hyvönen, E., Ikkala, E., Page, K., Ransom, L., Tuominen, J., Emery, D., Fraas, M., Heller, B., Lewis, D., Morrison, A., Porte, G., Thomson, E., Velios, A., & Wijsman, H. (2022). Harmonizing and publishing heterogeneous premodern manuscript metadata as Linked Open Data. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 73(2), 240-257. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24499