Talk for the New Media Writing Prize Awards event on 16th January 2019 at Bournemouth University, by Stella Wisdom and Jerry Jenkins

1. Places of inspiration: playing and
making in the library
Talk for:
New Media Writing Prize
2018 Awards evening
16th January 2019
Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator
@miss_wisdom
Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/

2. www.bl.uk 2
The British Library is the
national library of the UK
We receive a copy of every
publication produced in the UK and
Ireland
From 6 April 2013, legal deposit
covers e-books, e-journals and
other types of electronic
publication
Plus other material that is made
available to the public in the UK on
handheld media such as CD-
ROMs and microfilm, on the web
(including websites) and by
download from a website.
http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/legaldeposit/

3. www.bl.uk 3
Over 150 Million items
are stored in London and in
Yorkshire
If you saw 5 items a day
it would take you 80,000
years to see the whole
collection
Digitisation is crucial for
opening up access to
this content and collections
http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/quickinfo/facts/

4. www.bl.uk 4
The UK Web Archive
http://www.webarchive.org.uk
A collaboration between all of the UK Legal Deposit Libraries:
• Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University
• British Library
• Cambridge University Libraries
• National Library of Scotland
• National Library of Wales
• Trinity College, Dublin
Aims to collect all UK websites at least once per year

5. www.bl.uk 5
Born-Digital Manuscripts and Personal Digital Archives
The Wendy Cope Archive
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/10/british-library-digital-archives

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Born-Digital Manuscripts and Personal Digital Archives
Enhanced Curation: Hanif Kureishi's writing study
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/hanif-kureishis-writing-study
Panoramic view of writer Hanif Kureishi’s study created by taking a series of
photographs of the room and digitally stitching them together to make one image.

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Founded in 2010, the Digital
Scholarship Department at British
Library supports researchers and
staff to make innovative use of our
digital collections and data.
We are a group of cross disciplinary
experts in the areas of digitisation,
librarianship, digital history &
humanities, computer and data
science, looking at how technology is
transforming research, and in turn,
our services.
@BL_DigiSchol

9. • Making
– Off the Map Competition
– Rob Sherman’s Residency
– Interactive Fiction Summer School
– Mechanical Curator
– Read Watch Play Online Jams
• Odyssey Jam 2017
• Gothic Novel Jam 2018
• Events
– International Games Week in Libraries
• WordPlay
• AdventureX
– London Games Festival
• Off the Page
• Collecting and preserving
– Emerging Formats
• Ambient Literature
What I’ll talk about today:

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https://www.thenvm.org/

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Digital Rosslyn Chapel
De Montfort University student project created
http://rosslynchapeldmu.blogspot.co.uk/
https://youtu.be/wdUxeeVKm9g

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The Off the Map Competition
• A new type of collaboration
• Explores how British Library digital collections
can be used in creative ways
• Engagement with new audiences
• Opportunity for students in the UK to
showcase their talents to industry

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C.J. Visscher, London , 1616 (detail) Maps C.5.a.6

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John Leake, An exact surveigh of the streets lanes and churches contained within the
ruines of the City of London, 1667. Maps Crace port 2.58

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2013 winning team:
Pudding Lane Productions from De Montfort University, Leicester
Created an interpretation of 17th Century London
http://youtu.be/SPY-hr-8-M0 (Flythrough starts at 0:50)

21. Gothic theme, a tie-in with the Library's exhibition
Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination
3 October 2014 - 20 January 2015
• Fonthill Abbey
Home of William Beckford, author of Vathek
• Edgar Allan Poe’s
Masque of the Red Death
• Whitby and its association
with Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula
Off the Map 2014

22. Image from Delineations of Fonthill and its Abbey, John Rutter, 1823

23. Image from Delineations of
Fonthill and its Abbey,
John Rutter, 1823

24. 2014 winning team: Gothulus Rift, University of South Wales
Created a Fonthill Abbey inspired game called Nix using Oculus Rift
http://nixgamedevblog.blogspot.co.uk/
YouTube flythrough: http://youtu.be/8ESieZO4VHw

26. Fonthill Abbey model in Terror and Wonder exhibition at the British Library c Tony Antoniou

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2015 Winning Game:
“The Wondering Lands of Alice”
Team Off our Rockers, De Montfort University in Leicester
YouTube flythrough: https://youtu.be/7bwx4uUnbV4

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Off the Map 2016 1st Place:
“The Tempest” by Team Quattro, De Montfort University, Leicester
YouTube flythrough: https://youtu.be/0lzpEFgpk3Y

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Off the Map 2016 2nd Place:
‘Midsummer’ by Tom Battey, London College of Communication
Blog: http://tombattey.com/design/developing-interactive-dialogue-in-
midsummer/
YouTube flythrough: https://youtu.be/sz-IKvp62NI
Download the game:
http://tombattey.com/portfolio-items/midsummer/

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Off the Map 2016
3rd Place:
‘This Most Desolate Isle’
by Alan Stewart
Brunel University
Made using Twine

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Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
Interactive Writer-in-Residence 2014/15

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http://bonfiredog.co.uk/bonfog/2014/10/06/blackcrownend/
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/prhs-black-crown-project-go-offline
Rob Sherman - Black Crown Project

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Rob Sherman - Black Crown Project
“Black Crown represents Random
House’s ambition to push the
boundaries in online storytelling,
experiment with new business
models and launch a new author
in a groundbreaking way,”
Dan Franklin, Digital Publisher

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http://bonfiredog.co.uk/thespareset/
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/08/04/succour-and-shelter-the-spare-set/#more-224825

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Lines in the Ice - Seeking the Northwest Passage
British Library Free Exhibition
November 2014 to April 2015

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Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
Sir John Franklin Lady Franklin

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Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were lost on the ill-fated Franklin expedition in
search of the Northwest Passage in 1845

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Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
Isaak Scinbank, the ‘Arctic Angler’ of Milldale
http://onmywifesback.tumblr.com/post/100107314408/scinbank

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Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/collectioncare/2014/11/the-salmon-
book-conservation-in-reverse-.html

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Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
The Digital Cairn

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Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
Events & Music
https://soundcloud.com/the-british-library/sets/songs-from-on-my-wifes-back

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Infinite Journeys
Interactive Fiction Summer School
23 – 27 July 2018
https://www.bl.uk/events/infinite-journeys-interactive-fiction-summer-school

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http://bonfiredog.co.uk/knole/

44. Mechanical Curator
What can68,000
books tell us?
Image: Artwork by Alicia Martin

45. Many creative projects have used Public Domain
images from the Microsoft Partnership
Digitisation Project 2006-8
• 68,000 volumes (47,000+ titles) published in
the 19th century mostly in English
• Excluded authors active 1850-1901 and who
died after 1936
• Output: 25 million pages

46. The illustrations were extracted algorithmically from the
digitised books:
46
<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <mets:mets
xmlns:xsi="http://ww
w.w3.org/2001/XML
Schema-instance"
xmlns:mets="http://w
ww.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
Image snipped out
Algorithmically
From ALTO XML
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'
ALTO XML

47. http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/ https://twitter.com/MechCuratorBot

48. The illustrations were uploaded to Flickr and albums were
created through crowd-sourced tagging

49. David Normal
http://www.davidnormal.com/

52. David Normal created light boxes around the
Burning man, using the British Library’s Flickr Images
The Crossroads of Curiosity Installation
at Burning Man Festival

53. The Crossroads of Curiosity Installation at the British Library
June to November 2015
The installation featured an “augmented reality” self-guided tour enabling viewers to
explore the meaning and origins of the painting’s symbols using Blippar.
www.crossroadsofcuriosity.com
http://www.bl.uk/events/the-crossroads-of-curiosity-installation

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Sarah Cole, Poetic Places
Creative-Entrepreneur-In-Residence
http://www.poeticplaces.uk/

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What is Poetic Places?
• A free, native app for Android and iOS devices.
• Bring poetic depictions of places into the physical world,
helping people to encounter literature and heritage in
relevant locations, accompanied by materials drawn from
cultural heritage collections.
• Brings literature and heritage into everyday life in
unexpected moments. Serendipitous discovery; not tours.
• Browse the poems and places without being in situ.

58. https://www.badgicalkingdom.co.uk/

59. Odyssey Jam 2017
https://itch.io/jam/odysseyjam
Writing challenge tied in with Read Watch Play, a partnership of libraries
worldwide encouraging themed discussions of books, films, music and games,
each month they have a theme and for March 2017 it was #waterread.

60. Odyssey Jam 2017 entries
https://itch.io/jam/odysseyjam/entries
We encouraged entrants to make use of the digitised images on Flickr that The
British Library had released under a creative commons license.
Some games used these images, e.g. No One and 108 suitors.

61. 200th anniversary of the
publication of Frankenstein. A
perfect opportunity to run a gothic
novel themed challenge.
Gothic Novel Jam with Read Watch
Play; participants to make
something creative inspired by the
gothic novel genre and share it on
the itch.io Gothic Novel Jam site.
Entries invited to include stories,
poetry, art, games, music, films,
pictures, soundscapes, or any
other type of digital media
response.
We wanted participants to use
images from the British Library
Flickr account as inspiration

62. Gothic Novel Jam 2018
We received 46 entries submitted by people from all around the world including UK,
Australia, America and France.
https://itch.io/jam/gothic-novel-jam/entries

63. We encouraged entrants to use the digitised images on Flickr that The British Library had
released as Public Domain. As a glow brings out a haze by Eldridge Misnomer
is a lovely example of how these illustrations are used as a key part of the storytelling.

64. 3rd to 9th November 2019
8th to 14thNovember 2020
http://games.ala.org/international-games-week
http://games.ala.org/gaming-at-the-british-library

65. http://handeyesociety.com/event/wordplay-london-photo-video-recap/
WordPlay 2016 was held on the 19th of
November at the British Library in London as part
of International Games Day @ your Library.

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For 2018 International Games Week the British Library hosted
The Narrative Games Convention: AdventureX
http://adventurexpo.org/
https://youtu.be/PyJl5stFteI

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2017 Off the Page: Literature and Games event at British Library
Part of London Games Festival Fringe
Featured:
• Jon Ingold of Inkle and writer of Heaven's Vault
• Meg Jayanth, writer of 80 Days
• Tracy Fullerton, Walden, a game
• Guy Gadney on adapting John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes and creating online AI
thriller The Suspect
• Jeremy Hogan, Kim based on the Rudyard Kipling novel
• Jakub Szamalek, Senior Writer The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt
Currently planning “Off the Page: Chapter 2” for Saturday 13th April 2019
http://games.london/

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Emerging Formats Project
This project builds our ability to collect publications designed for mobile devices
that respond to reader interaction or are structured as databases.
Focus on three format types: eBook mobile apps, web-based interactive narratives
and structured data.
https://www.bl.uk/projects/emerging-formats

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The Cartographer’s Confession
by James Attlee
https://ambientlit.com/cartographersconfession

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Breathe
by Kate Pullinger
https://ambientlit.com/breathe

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It Must Have Been Dark by Then
by Duncan Speakman
https://ambientlit.com/index.php/it-must-have-been-dark-by-then/

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Web: http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship
Blog:
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
Email: stella.wisdom@bl.uk
Twitter: @miss_wisdom #bldigital

74. Emerging Formats at the British
Library
16 January 2019
New Media Writing Prize Awards
Jeremy Jenkins
Curator, Emerging Media,
Contemporary British Collections

75. www.bl.uk
What’s Covered
• An introduction to Contemporary British;
• Legal Deposit & E Legal Deposit;
• Emerging formats; scoping and
explorartion
• Emerging tools & collections.
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Contemporary British Collections
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• Overlapping time periods
• Published: post-2000, by date of publication
• Mss & Archives: post-1949, e.g. by death of originator
• Sound & Vison: 19th century onwards (entire archive);
• News offer with deep roots and contemporary complexity.
• Overlapping territoriality
• Published: UK-published;
• Mss & Archives: Strong association with UK;
• Sound & Vision: UK content very well represented, but strong
international content.

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Contemporary British Collections
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• Huge collections
• E.g. LD web archive in one year c.5M websites;
• Sound & Vision c.7M recordings;
• News Collections – 34,000 titles (60M issues);
• 40,000 emails in one writer’s collection; science digital.
• Rapid annual growth of collections
• e.g. UK books, c.100K titles p.a.
• e.g. sound recordings, c.55K titles p.a.
• Large and varied mss collections.

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The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works)
Regulations 2013
• Applies to the published work;
• Print is the default option – where it exists;
• Electronic deposit is one copy shared by all libraries;
• Where electronic is the only published format,
delivery is by web harvester or alternative;
arrangement agreed with publisher.
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Key purpose of the regulations
• To ensure a national collection of non-print publications;
• To enable an efficient system in which material is archived and preserved
in the legal deposit libraries;
• To govern how the deposited copies may be used, balancing the needs
of libraries and researchers with the interests of publishers and right
holders;
• To facilitate long-term preservation, so that the material may continue to
be accessed in future;
• To ensure long-term viability by requiring both legal deposit libraries and
publishers to share the responsibility for archiving without imposing an
unreasonable burden on any institution.

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Communications
Alexandria article: ‘Complex digital media and its impact on UK Legal Deposit Libraries’
Presentation and panel at No Time To Wait, 25-26 October at BFI, Southbank
Web Archive Conference 12- 14 November, National Library of New Zealand.
Panel on Legal Deposit in Digital Age
Complex Digital Objects collecting institutions group: Tate, BFI, British Museum, Science Museum, The
National Archives
AdventureX – Storytelling in Games, British Library 10- 11th November
Workshop on Emerging Formats collections 12th November
iPres 2018
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Observations: mobile eBooks & interactives
Functionality identified with apps include:
• Interaction with camera
• Interaction with internal gyroscope (rocking, turning, rotating)
• Interaction with touch screen
• Annotation
• Access to external data sets
• Rich visuals
• Sound
• Animation
• Maps
Functionality varies across editions, operating systems,
devices, privacy settings
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Apps developed for
children are more likely
to make use of device
peripherals and
therefore be more likely
to be device dependent

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An Example of New Media Content
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Goldilocks and Little
Bear by Nosy Crow

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Emerging Formats Paper
• Paper given at iPres 2018 conference in
Boston September 2018;
• Collecting various forms of born-digital
digital publications since 2013;
• Emerging Formats project looked at
selected types of content that were
potentially in scope for NPLD;
• Engagement with content underlined the
significance of the interactive elements.
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https://zenodo.org/record/1303008#.W6kDurmovGj

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Flashback project: fighting obsolescence
• The British Library’s digital collection dates
back to the late 1970s, digital content held
on thousands of floppy disks, CD-ROMs
and other disk media in the British Library's
collections.
• The 'Flashback Legacy Lab’
• Developed a process to rescue this content
from the shelves so that it could be
accessed by modern readers
• Ingest the imaged content into our
repository and make available in the
Reading Rooms.
• https://www.bl.uk/projects/flashback
84

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Emerging Tools
• PhD Student looking at How Mobile
phones are Changing Story Telling;
• UK Web Archive: Supporting future
researchers by attempting to capture and
archive project websites
• Build Web archive collections on specific
subjects
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https://beta.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/index

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Thank you.
Questions
Email: Jerry.Jenkins@bl.uk
Twitter: @Contemporary_BL
@_jerryjenkins
Blog: http://blogs.bl.uk/english-and-drama/index.html