http://labs.bl.uk 1#bl_labs [email protected] by the Andrew Mellon Foundation
Exploring Digital Collections and Data: Innovative Experiments and Future Opportunities at the British Library,Thursday, 23rd of April, 2015University of Hertfordshire
Mahendra Mahey Manager of British Library Labs
http://labs.bl.uk 2#bl_labs [email protected] by the Andrew Mellon Foundation
Exploring Digital Collections and Data: Innovative Experiments and Future Opportunities at the British Library,Monday, 20th of April, 2015Edge Hill University
Mahendra Mahey Manager of British Library Labs
Exploring Digital Collections and Data: Innovative Experiments and Future Opportunities at the British Library,Monday, 27th of April, 2015City University, London
Mahendra Mahey Manager of British Library Labs
http://labs.bl.uk 3#bl_labs [email protected]
How Labs works…
Audience
ideaExperiment OutputsBL Data
Other Data
idea
No idea
Dynamic / Creative interaction / with data, which means ideas
change, get reshaped etc.
idea
Competition Events
Projects
Awards
http://labs.bl.uk 4#bl_labs [email protected]
Building Bridges…
• Addressing the gap between researchers and the data
• Technical bridges between data and researchers
• ‘Planning permission’, working with curators, making sure things are built to time, relations to the locals, several stakeholders
http://labs.bl.uk 5#bl_labs [email protected]
Digital Scholarship
Digital Research
Access & Reuse Group
©
Developers/ Technical
Staff
Universities & widere.g. companies, start-ups,
independent scholars, artists, etc.
Stakeholders involved in Labs
United KingdomThe World
BL Labs
Curators / Researchers
DigitalContent
Advisory Board
Project Board
British Library
Researchers
http://labs.bl.uk 6#bl_labs [email protected]
Digital Scholarship
Digital Research
Access & Reuse Group
©
Developers/ Technical
Staff
Universities & widere.g. companies, start-ups,
independent scholars, artists, etc.
Stakeholders involved in Labs
United KingdomThe World
BL Labs
Curators / Researchers
DigitalContent
Advisory Board
Project Board
British Library
Researchers
http://labs.bl.uk 7#bl_labs [email protected]
The Role of Labs
Labs is a space in which new projects and approaches can be bench-tested; but is an important fragment of an ongoing negotiation about the role of the institutions of memory and knowing. And getting that role right is imperative…
Professor Tim Hitchcock, Labs Symposium ,2 November 2014
http://labs.bl.uk 8#bl_labs [email protected]
Digital is changing research
Data broken downrecombined and
duplicatedImage: Tower of Babble, Book Sculpture by Brian Dettmer
http://labs.bl.uk 9#bl_labs [email protected]
The Digital Scholar
Digital
NetworkedOpen
Scholar that employs digital, networked and open approaches to demonstrate their specialism.
http://labs.bl.uk 10#bl_labs [email protected]
Digital research methods
http://labs.bl.uk/Launch+Event (has some examples from researchers)
Corpus analysis toolsText 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 11#bl_labs [email protected]
CompetitionTell us your ideas of what to do with our digital
content
AwardsShow us what you have done with our digital
content
http://labs.bl.uk 12#bl_labs [email protected]
Previous Competition Winners
Desmond Schmidt
Text to Image Linking Tool - TILT
Mixing the Library, Information Interaction and the DJ
Dan Norton
Victorian Meme Machine - VMM
Bob Nicholson
Sample Generator
Pieter Francois Anna Gerber
http://labs.bl.uk 13#bl_labs [email protected]
Dan Norton: 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)
Living Lab: Library of the Future, see: http://alturl.com/284zw
http://labs.bl.uk 14#bl_labs [email protected]
Pieter Francois:Sample Generator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK80Jy0ijkAMore from Pieter Later…
http://labs.bl.uk 15#bl_labs [email protected]
Anna Gerber and Desmond Schmidt:Text to Image Linking Tool (TILT)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl4bjZSJ4cY&feature=youtu.be
http://labs.bl.uk 16#bl_labs [email protected]
YouTube: http://goo.gl/mBTlk2
Bob Nicholson:Victorian Meme Machine
http://labs.bl.uk 17#bl_labs [email protected]
Competition 2015
• http://labs.bl.uk
• International competition closes April 30th 2015
• Think of an idea of what to do with our data
• We choose two and work with them as researchers in ‘residence from’ June to end of October 2015 (expenses paid up to £3600)
• Showcase work on November 2 and win prize of up to £3000
http://labs.bl.uk 18#bl_labs [email protected]
Why work with the British Library?> 150 million items!!
> Fish and Chip Fridays
> Legacy
> Kudos
> Work with Curators
> Staff level access
> CV
> Pursue interests
> Help shape BL
King’s Library
http://labs.bl.uk 19#bl_labs [email protected]
Tips for competition (1)
•Look at previous winning examples or those that were shortlisted for an idea of style, word length etc.
•Communicate with us
•Don’t leave it too late!
http://labs.bl.uk 20#bl_labs [email protected]
Tips for competition (2)
• Look at the judging criteria…research question, technical, curatorial and legal factors
• Think of ‘invisible’ criteria – what’s good for the BL other researchers
• Publicity, Useful, Wider applicability
• Be realistic in your plan – only four months
• Look at the data if you can before you submit!
http://labs.bl.uk 21#bl_labs [email protected]
Awards 2015
• Work that uses our digital collections
• Recognition of outstanding work in one of three areas:
Research, Creativity and Entrepreneurship
• Closing date 14th of September 2015
• Shortlist Monday 12th of October 2015
• Winners announced on November 2, 2015, £500 per category.
http://labs.bl.uk 22#bl_labs [email protected]
British National BibliographyUK Web Archive Data19th Century Books
Environmental SoundsText-mining of
electronic journals
Book ordering and anonymised reader
data
Resonance FM10 year CommunityArts Radio Show
Datasets, Books / Text, Images / Music, Maps, Sounds, Multimedia
http://labs.bl.uk/Digital+Collectionshttp://data.bl.uk in phase 2
http://labs.bl.uk 23#bl_labs [email protected]
Sifting throughBritish Library Digital Collections
Available only in
Reading Rooms due
to ©
Available on site only
at the moment due to ©
Digital but not online –
various storage devices
Available only onsite,(at the moment), local events,
researchers in residence, remote access where possible
Digital & online
British Library
online behind paywall
We have over 400 digital collections and many are not
listed
http://labs.bl.uk 24#bl_labs [email protected]
Access to our data
Wireless Access PointEthernet Cable u:opendata
p:opendata
u:guestp:guest
smb://10.0.0.1/ftp://10.0.0.1
opendata
1
2
http://labs.bl.uk 26#bl_labs [email protected]
What’s on the Mini NAS?
• British National Bibliography – 3.5 million records (2 Gb)
• 90,000 Playbills – 1602 – 1902 (60 Gb)
• ALTO XML (includes METS and MODS) for OCR of 65,000 volumes, 22 million pages mostly from the 19 th Century (909 Gb)
• 1 million images snipped from books put on Flickr (667 Gb)
• 70,000 tagged images (170 Gb)
http://labs.bl.uk 28#bl_labs [email protected]
Labs not just a competition!
• Collaboration in many other projects– 3 Big Data Humanities Data AHRC Projects, National
Endowment of Humanities, Visibility tool – Peter Balman, Big Data Experiment, Working with Artists…
• Mechanical Curator and Flickr Images…
• 20 June 2015, Crossroads of Curiosity: The British Library Meets BurningMan - http://goo.gl/bK16BJ
http://labs.bl.uk 29#bl_labs [email protected]
David Normal: Crossroad of Curiosity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SBxO34Zlc