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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#