PowerPoint Presentation

Digital Research Support@ British LibraryStella Wisdom, Digital CuratorMusic Doctoral Open Day 2017

www.bl.uk#Meet the Digital Research TeamWe support researchers in the innovative use of British Library's digital collections and data through:

Working behind the scenes to get content in digital form and onlineOffering digital research support and guidanceSupporting collaborative projectsRunning events, competitions, and awards

www.bl.uk#Set up in 2010 the team was formed as a way of dedicating focus on the changing research landscape in the digital realm. Now embedded in collection areas, and as youll see later, joining the library explicitly as part of major digitisation projects.

Main activities:

Getting content in digital form and onlineCollaborations, Competitions & AwardsDigital research support and guidance

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Defining Digital ResearchUsing computational methods either to answer existing research questions or to challenge existing theoretical paradigms.GeocodingData VisualisationData MiningGeoreferencingCrowdsourcingText miningCollaboration

www.bl.uk#

THOR: Technical and Human Infrastructure for Open Researchhttps://project-thor.eu/

www.bl.uk#THORTechnical and Human infrastructure for Open Researchis a 30 month project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme. It will establish seamless integration between articles, data, and researchers across the research lifecycle. This will create a wealth of open resources and foster a sustainable international e-infrastructure. The result will be reduced duplication, economies of scale, richer research services, and opportunities for innovation.4

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. 5

Big Data + Old History

https://youtu.be/tp4y-_VoXdA

www.bl.uk#Example: 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

https://youtu.be/0lx0CL_dsQs

5,519 meetings discovered in 462 towns and villages across the UK http://politicalmeetingsmapper.co.uk/maps/ , https://youtu.be/0lx0CL_dsQs

www.bl.uk#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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Example:

Combining Text Analysis and Geographic Information Systems to investigate the representation of disease in nineteenth-century newspapersSpatial Humanities: Texts, GIS, Places at Lancaster Universityhttp://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/spatialhum.wordpress/

Paul Atkinson (history), Ian Gregory (digital humanities), Andrew Hardie (linguistics), Daniel Kershaw (computer science), Amelia Joulain-Jay (linguistics), Catherine Porter (geography) and Paul Rayson (computer science)

Research focuses on the discussion of disease, in nineteenth-century newspaper media. The case study chosen is a London based newspaper, the Era, which has been digitised and made available by the British Library. The digitised corpus (1838-1900, over 377 millions words) is explored using innovative qualitative and quantitative mechanisms to determine how the Era discussed and portrayed disease.

www.bl.uk#

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Being able to link the map and the underlying text allows us to understand how patterns vary from place to place. ... This spatial depiction of disease mentions not only allows us to explore the temporal geography of newspaper interest in different diseases, it also allows for a comparison with other patterns and information such as those found in official reports and statistics.Places associated with a range of common nineteenth century diseasesExample:

Combining Text Analysis and Geographic Information Systems to investigate the representation of disease in nineteenth-century newspapers

www.bl.uk#Beneficial combination of the computers ability to summarise patterns in large volumes of data, with the more traditional humanities skills of understanding subtly and nuance in documents written by humans9

How we can help youWe work with those operating at the intersection of academic research, cultural heritage and technology to support new ways of exploring and accessing our collections through:

Working behind the scenes to support and improve processes for getting content in digital form and onlineCollaborate with research groups on projectsOffer digital research support and guidanceEvents, competitions, and awards (BL Labs)

www.bl.uk#Finding Digitised CollectionsSome places to start

In the catalogue (Access Options: Online I want this)

Consult subject pages: http://www.bl.uk/subjects

Digitised Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/

Early Music Online: www.earlymusiconline.org/

British Library Sounds: http://sounds.bl.uk/

Collections & Discover sections on www.bl.uk

Endangered Archives: http://eap.bl.uk/database/collections.a4d

International Dunhuang Project: http://idp.bl.uk/pages/collections.a4d

Online Gallery: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/

Flickr (Public Domain): https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/albums

Wikimedia Commons(Public Domain): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Collections_of_the_British_Library Particularly the Synoptic Index: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:British_Library/Mechanical_Curator_collection/Synoptic_index

Data.bl.uk (NEW!) and Collection Metadata http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html

www.bl.uk#Ordering Images for Research/Publication:

British Library Imaging Services provide a range of products to suit your needs, whether thats private research or commercial publication

Images of some of our collections are already available to buy and download straight away through Images Online (https://imagesonline.bl.uk), so you should check there first before ordering from our Imaging Services (https://www.bl.uk/imaging-services/ordering-images).

www.bl.uk#Self-Service Photography:

You may use your own device to take photographs of some categories of material in the Reading Rooms. Photography of the collections is only permitted for your own personal reference purposes.

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/copy/selfsrvcopy/selfservcopy.html

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/copy/selfsrvcopy/book_photography_icons.mp4

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/copy/selfsrvcopy/reading_room_photography_guidelines_st_pancras.pdf

www.bl.uk#Datasetsdata.bl.uk

As part of its work to open its data to wider use, the British Library is making copies of some of its datasets available for research and creative purposes.

We aim to describe collections in terms of their data format (images, full text, metadata, etc.), licences, temporal and geographic scope, originating purpose (e.g. specific digitisation projects or exhibitions) and collection, and related subjects or themes.

This site is a 'beta', and is in the early stages of development. If you have questions or feedback about this site or our open data work, please emaildigitalresearch@bl.uk.

We'd also love to hear what you've done or made with the data.

www.bl.uk#Have a digital research enquiry? Get in touch!

Web: http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship

Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/

Email: digitalresearch@bl.uk

Twitter: : @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital

www.bl.uk#