British Library Labs - Open University Presentation - 3 April 2014, 1100-1200

The Digital Scholar:
Experiences from the British Library Labs
Mahendra Mahey
Arts Music Studio, The Open University Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes
Thursday 3rd April, 2014, 1100 – 1200
Manager of British Library Labs

http://labs.bl.uk 2
#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Overview
• Structure of talk
• The British Library and a typical scholar
• The Nature of Digital and the Digital Scholar
• The British Library supporting Digital Scholarship
• Experiences of the Digital Research Team and British
Library Labs project in supporting digital scholarship
• Conclusions and questions

http://labs.bl.uk 3
#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
The British Library
St Pancras, London, UK
Many books are stored 5 stories below the building
Inside the British Library
Space for 1200 readers, around 400,000 visitors per year
Uses low oxygen and robots
Storage at Boston Spa

http://labs.bl.uk 4
#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
British Library Collections
> 150million items
> 0.8 m serial titles
> 8 m stamps
> 14 m books
> 3 m sound recordings
> 4 m maps
> 1.6 m musical scores
> 0.3 m manuscripts
> 60 m patents
King’s Library

http://labs.bl.uk 5
#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Our Scholar in Humanities from Oxford…
• Travel routes in the 19th Century
Pieter Francois
Post doctoral researcher at University of Oxford

http://labs.bl.uk 6
#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
The Nature of Digital
Data broken down
recombined and
duplicated Image: Tower of Babble, Book Sculpture by Brian Dettmer

http://labs.bl.uk 7
#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
The Digital Scholar
not necessarily be a recognised academic or someone who posts online,
just a specialist
Digital
NetworkedOpen
From Digital Scholar : How technology is transforming scholarly practice, Martin Weller, Bloomsbury Academic, 2011, page 4
It is someone who employs digital, networked and open
approaches to demonstrate their specialism.

http://labs.bl.uk 8
#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
“Reading individual works is
as irrelevant as describing
the architecture of a building
from a single brick, or the
layout of a city from a single
church.”
-Franco Moretti

http://labs.bl.uk 9
#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Example Digital research methods
http://labs.bl.uk/Launch+Event (presentations from researchers using digital research methods)
Corpus analysis tools/
Text Mining
Visualisations
Location based searching
Geotagging
Annotation
Natural Language
Processing
Using Application Programming Interfaces
for datasets e.g. Metadata, Images
Transcribing
Crowdsourcing /
Human Computation

http://labs.bl.uk 10
#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Digitisation - Transforming access
Spreading the value of collections, content and expertise
Connecting as much as collecting, e.g. social media
Encouraging others to integrate our materials into their
services – and vice versa

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
only in
Reading
Rooms due
to ©
only on
site due to
©
not
online –
various
storage
devices
online
and open
British Library
online
behind
paywall
Challenges of Digital access

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
British National
Bibliography
UK Web Archive Data
Text-mining of
electronic journals
Book ordering and
anonymised reader
data
Sample Labs Digital Collections
http://labs.bl.uk/Digital+Collections
• Copyright cleared for research
use
• Curated (Is there someone who
knows the ‘story’ about the
collection?)
• Collection / Item Level
Metadata available? (What state is
and does it need cleaning?)
• Where is it?

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Digital Scholarship Department
…become a leading centre of digital scholarship
… internationally recognised for innovation and
collaboration in support of research and
learning…
•The Digital Research Team
– Digital Curators
•Labs
13

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
What is a Digital Curator?
• Explore how digital technologies are
re/shaping research and how this
informs how the library does its
business.
• Support staff across the library to identify
the opportunities that digital tools and
collections afford in modern scholarship
and to gain the skills to engage confidently
in this area.
• Partner with libraries and institutions to
enable innovation in digital scholarship.
• No specific collection but rather expertise
in digital scholarship, broadly defined.
James Baker Nora McGregor
Stella Wisdom Aquiles
Alencar-Brayner

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Training Library Staff
• Foundations in working with Digital Objects:
From Images to A/V
• Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly
Research
• Information Integration: Mash-ups, API’s and The
Semantic Web
Digital Scholarship
Training Programme
• Behind the Screen: Basics of the Web
• What is Digital Scholarship?
• Digital Collections at British Library
• Digitisation at British Library
• Text Encoding Initiative & Annotation
• Geo-referencing and Digital Mapping
• Crowdsourcing in Libraries, Museums
and Cultural Heritage Institutions

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Opening up Digital content
• Picturing Canada: Mapping a Collection:
http://bit.ly/13GhLIe
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:British_Library/Picturing_Canada

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Crowdsourcing Digitised Maps
http://www.bl.uk/maps/georeferencingmap.html

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Creative with Wildlife Sounds
http://goo.gl/s7siv0
Sound Edit Wildlife Films
Competition 2013 http://vimeo.com/60401313
'Dave's Wild Life' by
Samuel de Ceccatty, won first prize!
http://sounds.bl.uk/Environment

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Computer Games
Off the Map Competition 2013
Pudding Lane Productions, 6 second-year students,
De Montfort University, Leicester, won first prize.
Off the Map
Gothic 2014 !
http://goo.gl/gVuVnw
http://youtu.be/SPY-hr-8-M0

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Digital
Scholarship
Digital
Research
Access &
Reuse Group
©
Developers/
Technical
Staff
British Library
Universities & wider
e.g. companies, start-ups,
independent scholars etc.
Stakeholders involved in Labs
United Kingdom
The World
Researchers
Developers
BL Labs
Curators /
Researchers
Digital
Content

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
What is Labs…
BL Labs
Open
Software
Publications
Tools &
services to
support Digital
Scholarship
Case
Studies
Audience
Research
question / idea
idea
idea
Competition
Contact
Events
Meetings
and visits
Experimenting with our
digital collections
Outputs from
engagementData
Other Digital
Collection / Data
BL Digital
Collection /
Data
Researchers
Developers
Data Driven

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Engaging with Labs
Brainstorm ideas & group
Reflect, consider, and choose
Work late and show what has
been done
1 2 3
Labs Data Cards
Ideas Labs
Hack and Data days
Projects

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
The winners of the Labs 2013 competition
Pieter Francois (left) and Dan Norton (right)
and each received a cheque for £2000 in November 2013
as winners of the first British Library Lab Competition 2013
Two entries chosen in June 2013
They both worked in residence from July to October 2013
with Labs to complete their projects

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Pieter Francois
– made in the British Library
http://youtu.be/xK80Jy0ijkA

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Sample Generator: representative samples
• Pieter Francois
• Focus on European travel in the
19th Century
• Uses statistical methods to
support text analysis
• Tool produces representative
samples of texts based on
search criteria
http://goo.gl/YFnZmu

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Mixing the Library:
The Disc Jockey & the Digital Collection
http://www.tompro.co.uk
http://www.ablab.org/shetland
http://www.ablab.org/pd/di/
Prototype design
Annotation
Preview ‘item’
Selected ‘right’
channel ‘item’
Selected ‘left’
channel ‘item’
Collection ‘stalks’ made of ‘items’. Each ‘item’ is a URL.
The order of the ‘items’ can be ‘shuffled’ and sent to the ‘left’ or ‘right’ channels
‘Play back’ of ‘items’ (Blue)
and annotations (Yellow)
http://212.71.253.54:8000/a
Living Lab: Library of the Future, see: http://alturl.com/284zw
Basic functioning prototype:

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Curatorial for Library metadata
Geo location
http://datatales.artefacto.org.uk/
TimelineSlide show
India Office Select materials

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Story of one digital collection
What can 68,000
books tell us?
Image: Artwork by Alicia Martin

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
The Mechanical Curator
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com
• #similar_to_77576796197_published_date
• #similar_to_77576796197_slantyness
• #similar_to_77576796197_bubblyness_x
• #similar_to_77576796197_bubblyness_y
• #new_train_of_thought
Image from ‘A Lost Estate, by Mary E.Mann,Volume: 02,
Page: 91, 1889, London, Bentley & Son

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
1,020,418 images!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/
Each image has a URL
Some metadata, but you can add tags!
Flickr has an API so researchers and developers can build apps
And query the data
Flickr Commons – 1,020,418 images!

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Risks of releasing the images
Funny Books for Boys and Girls. Struwelpeter. Good-for-nothing Boys
and Girls. Troublesome Children. King Nutcracker and Poor Reinhold.

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Flickr coverage in the media!

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Creative Uses
http://goo.gl/qPPgxX
http://goo.gl/OH6FSn
Jura’s Sound Skateboard

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Tagging a million images
- Metadata games and other projects
http://www.metadatagames.org/
Games will probably be developed using Flickr sets
http://goo.gl/j6fxac
Cardiff University’s - Lost Visions Project

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Other Labs stories….
• Augmenting news metadata
• Digital Music Lab, analysing music performances
• Opening up over 100,000 Playbills
• 3D printed objects representing statistical data
• data.bl.uk, place for all our open data and digital collections
• Content next to parallel compute power, analysis at scale
• Seeking future funding!!

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Competition 2014
• Open!!
• Deadline - 22 April 2014 – tell your friends!
• Residency between late May and end of October 2014

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Conclusions
• Huge appetite for openly available digital content
• There needs to be a continuous dynamic interaction with
data and the researchers to formulate and reformulate
research questions
• Working with Digital Scholars creates new opportunities
• Content and service providers, researchers and technical
people need to talk to each other to create the new tools,
services and data needed to facilitate new discoveries

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Acknowledgements
Ben O’Steen
- Labs Technical Lead
Digital Curator Team Digital Scholarship Heads
Stella Wisdom
- Digital Curator
Nora McGregor
- Digital Curator
James Baker
- Digital Curator
Adam Farquhar
- Head of Digital Scholarship
(Wrote Labs proposal)
Aly Conteh
- Head of Digital Research and
Curator Team

#bl_labs labs@bl.uk
Email Labs
• Let us know your ideas for engaging with Labs!
• Questions? After coffee break.
labs@bl.uk

British Library Labs - Open University Presentation - 3 April 2014, 1100-1200

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British Library Labs - Open University Presentation - 3 April 2014, 1100-1200