Below is a list of datasets that might be useful as a starting off point for a research project. These datasets also show the variety of formats, origins, and disciplines that datasets can come in and speak to. By no means is this an exhaustive list of available datasets.
- Bechdel Test film dataset used for a 2014 article from fivethirtyeight
- Every Doctor Who Villain since 1963
- Age Gap in Hollywood Films
- Places that Anthony Bourdain Traveled
- Broadway in NYC
- FMA: a Dataset for Music Analysis – contains track metadata along with genre information and features. Data is available in zip files, github repository also contains scripts for analysis
- Million Song Dataset
- Arts and Museums Salary dataset (crowdsourced)
- Museum of Modern Art Exhibitions dataset and MOMA Department Heads dataset
- Edvard Much’s Drawings
- 650 Years of European Grape Harvests
- London Lives Coroners Inquests (data around deaths in London 1690-1800)
- Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations – includes data about climate, economy, shipwrecks, and more
- Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
- Documenting the American South – The Church in the Southern Black Community
- Documenting the American South – North American Slave Narratives
- National Prisoner Statistics 1978-2011
- Thomas Pettigrew Papers – Good for network analysis and/or text analysis
- Nixon White House Recordings
- NYC Dog Names
- NCAA student athlete graduation success data
- The National UFO Reporting Center Online Database (not downloadable, but could be converted to a spreadsheet – ask Kate for help)
Places to look for datasets:
- Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)
- Awesome Public Datasets – index of datasets
- Big 10 Academic Alliance GeoPortal – maps and geodata held by Big 10 universities
- Datacite
- DataisPlural – spreadsheet of datasets shared from curated email list
- Documenting the Now – Collection of twitter datasets
- Digital Humanities Resources for Project Building – Data Collections & Datasets
- Google Dataset Search
- Library of Congress – (Labs guide for using data)
- MSU Library Datasets
- Project Gutenberg – books available as plain text