50
Supporting the Digital Scholar:Experiences from the British Library Labs
Mahendra Mahey
2014 NFAIS Annual ConferenceSunday 23rd February, 2014, 1600 – 1645 (EST)
Manager of British Library Labs
http://labs.bl.uk 3#bl_labs [email protected]
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 4#bl_labs [email protected]
The British Library
St Pancras, London, UKMany books are stored 5 stories below the building
Inside the British LibrarySpace for 1200 readers, around 400,000 visitors per year
Uses low oxygen and robotsStorage at Boston Spa
http://labs.bl.uk 5#bl_labs [email protected]
British Library Collections> 150 million 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 6#bl_labs [email protected]
Our Scholar in Humanities…
• Travel routes in the 19th Century
Pieter FrancoisPost doctoral researcher at University of Oxford
http://labs.bl.uk 7#bl_labs [email protected]
The Nature of Digital
Data broken downrecombined and
duplicatedImage: Tower of Babble, Book Sculpture by Brian Dettmer
http://labs.bl.uk 8#bl_labs [email protected]
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 9#bl_labs [email protected]
“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 10#bl_labs [email protected]
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 12#bl_labs [email protected]
Digitised Books
250,000 books digitised with Google
68,000 volumes digitised with Microsoft 17th, 18th and 19th Century
Image taken from page 144 of 'Philadelphia: the story of an American city ... Issued by the City of Philadelphia under the auspices of the Joint Special Committee of Councils on World's Columbian Exposition.
Natural History: The HippopotamusTemple at Navoo?
http://labs.bl.uk 13#bl_labs [email protected]
Digitised Newspapers
Newspapers stored at Colindale (now closed)
http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
http://labs.bl.uk 16#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 17#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 18#bl_labs [email protected]
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
18
http://labs.bl.uk 19#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 20#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 21#bl_labs [email protected]
Opening up Digital content
• Picturing Canada: Mapping a Collection: http://bit.ly/13GhLIe
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:British_Library/Picturing_Canada
http://labs.bl.uk 22#bl_labs [email protected]
Crowdsourcing Digitised Maps
http://www.bl.uk/maps/georeferencingmap.html
http://labs.bl.uk 23#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 24#bl_labs [email protected]
Computer GamesOff the Map Competition 2013
Pudding Lane Productions, 6 second-year students,De Montfort University, Leicester, won first prize.
Off the Map Gothic
2014 !launches
soon!
http://youtu.be/SPY-hr-8-M0
http://labs.bl.uk 25#bl_labs [email protected] by the Andrew Mellon Foundation
http://labs.bl.uk 26#bl_labs [email protected]
Digital Scholarship
Digital Research
Access & Reuse Group
©
Developers/ Technical
Staff
British Library
Universities & widere.g. companies, start-ups, independent scholars etc.
Stakeholders involved in Labs
United KingdomThe World
Researchers
Developers
BL Labs
Curators / Researchers
DigitalContent
http://labs.bl.uk 27#bl_labs [email protected]
What is Labs…
BL Labs
OpenSoftware
Publications
Tools & services to
support Digital Scholarship
Case Studies
AudienceResearch
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
http://labs.bl.uk 28#bl_labs [email protected]
British NationalBibliography
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?
http://labs.bl.uk 29#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 30#bl_labs [email protected]
The winners of the Labs 2013 competition
Pieter Francois (left) and Dan Norton (right) and each received a cheque for £2000 in November 2013as winners of the first British Library Lab Competition 2013
Two entries chosen in June 2013
They both worked in residence from July to October 2013with Labs to complete their projects
http://labs.bl.uk 31#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 32#bl_labs [email protected]
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:
http://labs.bl.uk 33#bl_labs [email protected]
Curatorial for Library metadata
Geo location
http://datatales.artefacto.org.uk/
TimelineSlide show
India Office Select materials
http://labs.bl.uk 34#bl_labs [email protected]
Story of one digital collection
What can 68,000books tell us?
Image: Artwork by Alicia Martin
http://labs.bl.uk 35#bl_labs
Extracting Images from OCR
35
Digitisation
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <mets:mets xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:mets="http://www.loc.gov/METS/" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.loc.gov/
METS/ http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/ver
sion18/mets.xsd info:lc/xmlns/premi
s-v2
Optical
Character
Recognition Image snipped outAlgorithmically
From XML
Image snipped out
Image taken from page 207 of 'London and its Environs. A picturesque survey of the metropolis and the suburbs ... Translated by Henry Frith. With ... illustrations'
XML
http://labs.bl.uk 36#bl_labs [email protected]
Face Recognition of 19th Century Faces
The face-recognition algorithm worked better for female faces than men’s
http://labs.bl.uk 37#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 38#bl_labs [email protected]
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 appsAnd query the data
Flickr Commons – 1,020,418 images!
http://labs.bl.uk 39#bl_labs [email protected]
Flickr in numbers
119,000,000 !!!image views since launch December 13th, 2013
47,714 tags added
18,567 images favourited
Labs involved with 2 potential research projects & 4 grassroots crowdsourcing efforts.
http://labs.bl.uk 40#bl_labs [email protected]
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.
http://labs.bl.uk 41#bl_labs [email protected]
Opportunities – increasing traffic to Library services
You can purchase a ‘High Res’ Copy
View in the Library Item Viewer
Download .pdfAll illustrations
in book
Other illustrations in booksPublished in same year
View the item in the Library Catalogue Tags auto generated
User generatedTag
Grouping for image
http://labs.bl.uk 43#bl_labs [email protected]
Creative Useshttp://goo.gl/qPPgxX
http://goo.gl/OH6FSn
Jura’s Sound Skateboard
http://labs.bl.uk 44#bl_labs [email protected]
Other Labs stories….
• Augmenting news metadata
• Digital Music Lab, analysing music performances
• Opening up over 100,000 Playbills
• 3D printed objects representing statistical data with possibly embedded USBs and RFID chips
• data.bl.uk, place for all our open data and digital collections
• Content next to parallel compute power, analysis at scale
• Seeking future funding!!
http://labs.bl.uk 45#bl_labs [email protected]
Competition 2014
• Open!!
• Deadline - 22 April 2014 – tell your friends!
• Residency between late May and end of October 2014
http://labs.bl.uk 46#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 47#bl_labs [email protected]
What excites you most about digital scholarship?
1 Opening up digital content
2 New research methodologies opening up new discoveries
3 New commercial opportunities
4 How technology is enabling new research
5 Thinking of new ideas to support digital scholarship
http://labs.bl.uk 48#bl_labs [email protected]
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
http://labs.bl.uk 49#bl_labs [email protected]
Email Labs
• Let us know your ideas for engaging with Labs!
• Questions? Speak to me at the Welcome Reception.
