compilation
This term carries a sense of curation and organization. It suggests that the items were not created as a single unit but were plucked from different places and assembled with a specific purpose or theme in mind. It is frequently used in the music and literary industries to describe anthologies or best-of collections. In a technical or computing context, the word takes on a very different meaning, referring to the process of translating high-level source code into machine-readable instructions. This usage is sterile and mechanical, stripped of the artistic curation associated with a musical compilation.
Countable when referring to the final product, like a compilation of short stories. Uncountable when referring to the general process of gathering the materials.