PowerPoint Presentation
Doing Digital Research@ British LibraryAn intro to the Digital
Research TeamAquiles Alencar-Brayner Digital Curator
@AquilesBrayner
www.bl.uk#
The British Library is the national library of the UK.
By law we receive a copy of every publication produced in the UK
and Ireland.
If you saw 5 items a day it would take you 80,000 years to see
the whole collection
www.bl.uk#
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Over 150 Million items are stored in London and in Yorkshire
Butthe Library is becoming as much a place full of data as it is
a place full of physical stuff, and there is a growing community of
users who see it that way.
http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/quickinfo/facts/
www.bl.uk#
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4y-_VoXdA
www.bl.uk
www.bl.uk#https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4y-_VoXdA4
Meet the Digital Research TeamThe Digital Research Team is a
cross-disciplinary mix of curators, researchers, librarians and
technologists supporting the creation and innovative use of British
Library's digital collections.
www.bl.uk#Clockwise from top Left:
Aquiles Alencar-Brayner, European & AmericasNora McGregor,
Asian & African CollectionsStella Wisdom, Digital Curator,
Contemporary BritishMahendra Mahey, Project Manager, Mellon funded
BL Labs ProjectBen OSteen, Technical Lead, Mellon funded BL Labs
ProjectMia Ridge, Digital Curator, Western Heritage
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Living knowledge: six core purposes
www.bl.uk
www.bl.uk#Custodianship: Getting content in digital
formatTransforming print catalogue records into digital
(retroconversion)Example: c750,000 printed books held in Asian
& African Collections are listed only in hard-copy catalogues.
AAC Department is tackling this through innovative digitisation/
crowdsourcing approach http://www.libcrowds.com/
www.bl.uk#Support projects around 7
Getting content in digital formMass Digitisation Private/Public
Partnerships (Google)Large Fundraising Campaigns
(#SaveOurSounds)Research Grants (Two Centuries Indian
Print)Preservation of at risk formats (Degrading
microfilms)Non-Print Legal Deposit Acquisitions (UK Web
Archive)See:
http://www.bl.uk/help/initiate-a-new-digitisation-project-with-the-british-library
www.bl.uk#How we define Digital ResearchUsing computational
methods either to answer existing research questions or to
challenge existing theoretical paradigms.GeotaggingData
VisualisationData MiningGeoreferencingDigital
MappingCrowdsourcingText miningCollaboration
www.bl.uk#Defining Digital ResearchUsing computational methods
either to answer existing research questions or to challenge
existing theoretical paradigms.Machine learning
Data VisualisationData MiningGeoreferencingDigital
MappingCrowdsourcingText miningCollaboration
www.bl.uk
www.bl.uk#
Getting Content OnlineImages published on
Flickrhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibraryWikimedia
Synoptic IndexSearch Interface: BL 1 Million Images
www.bl.uk#With an algorithm by Ben OSteen we snipped out images
from digitised books and put them on to Flickr on December 13 2013,
there were over a million, but the problem we had was that we knew
which books they came from (author/dates), but we didnt have any
information about the images. By releasing them onto flickr, we
have got people to start tagging them and using them in very
creative ways.
Hosting them internally was not an option and there was not
sufficient metadata to put them on Wikipedia. Flickr seemed the
obvious option as it is a platform that can support high usage, did
not require metadata, allowed tagging and it is free for public
domain images.11
www.bl.uk#One way is through the British Library Labs project
and the Digital Curator team which make up the Digital Research
Team. The aim of the lab is to encourage scholars to experiment at
scale with our digital collections and data. The team holds
competitions, events, and creates the space in which to engage with
scholars working in this realm. Through the labs were learning how
to better support scholars and build new services. 12
Collaborations, Competitions & Awards
http://www.bl.uk/projects/british-library-labs
www.bl.uk#
2015 Winner: Political Meetings MapperI was able to do in
minutes with a python code what Id spent the last ten years trying
to do by hand! -Dr. Katrina Navickas, BL Labs Winner 2015
5,519 meetings discovered in 462 towns and villages across the
UK! http://www.bl.uk/case-studies/political-meetings-mapper
www.bl.uk#Video:
Research Question:
Chartism was the biggest popular movement for democracy in 19th
Century British history. They campaigned for the vote for all men.
The Chartists advertised their meeting in the Northern Star
newspaper from 1838 to 1850.
The question is, how many of the meetings took place and where?
We started with 1841-1845.
Source Collections:
19th Century Digitised Newspapers, specifically Northern Star
newspaperDigitised and Georeferenced Map of Oxford Street
Digital/Computational Techniques:
The images of the relevant pages of the Northern Star were run
through an Optical Character Recognition program (Abbyy Finereader
12) and the resulting text was checked manually.
We developed a set of Python codes to extract and geo-code the
place of meeting, using a gazetteer of places, and parse the date
of the meeting.
Outcome: 5,519 meetings discovered in 462 towns and villages
across the UK! http://politicalmeetingsmapper.co.uk/maps/
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Business, culture, learning:Collaborations, Competitions &
Awards
https://vimeo.com/92272538
http://gamecity.org/alices-adventures-off-the-map-winners-announced/
www.bl.uk#A new type of collaborationExplores how British
Library digital collections can be used in creative waysEngagement
with new audiences Opportunity for students in the UK to showcase
their talents to industry
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Public engagement: UK SoundMapIn 2009 British Library sound
archive staff began tests for a new kind of field recording project
to aggregate user-generated digital audio content using mobile
phones. Named the UK SoundMap, the project represents a radical
departure from the more traditional, curator-led professional
archival practices we were used to.The UK SoundMap uses an informal
community of mobile phone users (via Audioboo) to capture and
describe their environmental sounds, then enable near-instant
public sharing on a dedicated website: in effect, contributors as
curator-publishers.http://sounds.bl.uk/Sound-Maps/UK-Soundmap
www.bl.uk#GeoreferencerThe British Library began a project to
crowdsource the georeferencing of its scanned historic mapping in
2011 by partnering withKlokan Technologies.
Over 8,000 maps have already been "placed" by participants
checked for accuracy and approved for reviewers.
We are currently on the sixth release, which features over
50,000 maps from the 17th, 18th, and 19th-century book
illustrations on Flickr
http://www.bl.uk/maps/
Video explanation: https://vimeo.com/36419466
www.bl.uk#International: Endangered Archives
Programmehttp://eap.bl.uk/
www.bl.uk#Getting in touchWeb:
http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship
Blog:
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: #bldigital
www.bl.uk#
