2. www.bl.uk 2
Objectives
– Wider engagement from staff in
implementing BL Digital Scholarship
Strategy
– Redefine the role of BL in taking an
active approach to digital research
– Increase awareness of digital tools and
methodologies used by researchers
– Foster stronger engagement between
BL departments and teams
– Increase ability to shape digital services
– Increase confidence in establishing
collaborations with external partners for
supporting digital research
– Improve fluency around data
management and analysis
3. www.bl.uk 3
Design & Development
• Surveyed the current literature, primarily around Digital Humanities
• Sought out scholars working at the intersection of computing and
scholarship and joined them for informal chats about their research.
• Consulted the proceedings of major conferences across Europe such as
Digital Humanities 2012 in Hamburg and the Digital Humanities Congress
2012 at University of Sheffield
• Surveyed the skills which academics were acquiring by attending pertinent
training courses and reviewing open syllabi and course materials.
• Drafted individual briefs and learning outcomes for what would become our
core offering of 15 one-day courses.
• Each of the team members took responsibility for managing a set of the
courses and worked with our internal advisory board and experts from
within the Library and institutions on the leading edge of digital scholarship
such as King’s College London, University College London and University
of Oxford to finalise the courses.
4. www.bl.uk 4
The Initial Programme: 15 courses (offered 3 times a
year) launched in November 2012
1. Social Media: Introduction to Yammer, Twitter, and
Blogging
2. Working collaboratively: Using the BL Wiki
3. Presentation skills: From PowerPoint to Prezi
4. Foundations in working with Digital Objects: From
Images to A/V
5. Behind the Screen: Basics of the Web
6. Metadata for Electronic Resources: Dublin Core,
METS, MODS, RDF, XML
7. What is Digital Scholarship?
8. Digital Collections at British Library
9. Digitisation at British Library
10.Communicating our collections online: Access &
Reuse Policy
11.Crowdsourcing in Libraries, Museums and Cultural
Heritage Institutions
12.Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
13.Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly
Research
14.Geo-referencing and Digital Mapping
15.Information Integration: Mash-ups, API’s and The
Semantic Web
•
5. www.bl.uk 5
New courses offered:
• Cleaning up Data Uncover hidden datasets within your area which may prove
useful to researchers, and gain the skills to clean and arrange it in a way which
makes it more accessible for further analysis. The day will primarily consist of
hands-on guided introduction on getting started in OpenRefine through a mix of
prepared exercises highlighting the key features and functions of the software
• The Programming Curator Provides an introduction to querying,
transforming and mining research data using the command line. It will explore
why well documented and structured research data is an important prerequisite
of data mining, before introducing a number of basic Unix command line actions
for querying, transforming and mining research data.
• Managing Personal Digital Research Information This course will
explain how reference management software can be used to manage individual
and collaborative research.
• Digital Storytelling This course looks at why stories are a powerful and
effective way to communicate and how the technique can be used effectively for
a wide range of purposes including learning, publicity and marketing and
community engagement.
6. www.bl.uk 6
Our Principles
• Deliver from the library practitioner
perspective and highlight the
Library’s current work, or potential
for supporting Digital Research.
• Make staff aware of digital tools in
research environment and how
these can be applied to their role at
the Library.
• Focus on the wider concepts,
methods and processes which tools
enable rather than teaching to the
tools.
• Include a hands-on practical
element preferably using British
Library digital content.
• Courses aimed at “intelligent novices”,
that is, staff who have heard about the
concepts but haven’t had the time,
space or opportunity to explore them in
any depth.
• Deliver a one-day workshop onsite
rather than online as audience comes
to table with varied technical skills and
subject expertise.
• More important to alert colleagues to
what is happening outside the Library
so they can make informed decisions
on whether to adopt a new tool or
method, rather than stay solely within
boundaries of current British Library
policies and practices.
7. www.bl.uk 7
So far so good!
“Great to have something often
referred to demystified”
“I’ve never done anything like this
before!”
“Well done to you and your DC
team, I have attended some of the
other courses myself and am
recommending my staff attend
them too.”
“[I valued] the time to explore our ideas
and see how to develop current projects
into a more useful resource”
“…I was very grateful to attend this and
learned a great deal…Look forward to
more. Renewed thanks for organising this.”
November 2012-March 2014 saw:
52 course days delivered
256 individual members of staff
attended one or more
684 seats filled
3 courses attended pp on average
