British Library
Games Collaborations
Talk for:
Games Fictioning
at Goldsmiths Library
9th November 2018
Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator
@miss_wisdom
Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/

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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

Meet the Digital Scholarship Team
Main Activities:
• Staff training
• Promoting Digital Scholarship
within BL
• Curating digital research data
• Project management
• Engagement with users
• Creating and sharing online
content with other libraries and
research centres
• Communication: events, blogging,
social media

• Off the Map Competition
• Playing Beowulf
• Litcraft
• Rob Sherman’s transmedia residency
• Interactive Fiction Summer School
• Odyssey Jam 2017
• Gothic Novel Jam 2018
• AdventureX
• Games & GLAMs
What I’ll talk about today:

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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)

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

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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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Playing Beowulf
Project with University College London Institute of Education, funded by the Arts
and Humanities Research Council in the UK. Developed a game-authoring tool
based on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, for use by schools, universities,
curators and library visitors.
http://darecollaborative.net/2015/03/11/playing-beowulf-gaming-the-library/
http://creativeedutech.com/products/missionmaker-beowulf/

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Litcraft uses the Minecraft platform to
explore and better understand literary
landscapes; e.g. Treasure Island
Each map is recreated from the maps
published with each text, hand-crafted
and scaled to provide a fun world, that
permits both exploration and building
tasks.
https://chronotopiccartography.wordpress.com/litcraft/

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

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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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Next projects I’m about to discuss use 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

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The illustrations were extracted algorithmically from the
digitised books:
30
<?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

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

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

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.

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.

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. By the 31st July
upload or 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

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

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.

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For 2018 International Games Week the British Library is hosting
The Narrative Games Convention: AdventureX
10-11 November 2018
http://adventurexpo.org/
https://youtu.be/PyJl5stFteI

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http://newmediawritingprize.co.uk/

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A forum for those who are interested in games, cultural heritage
and GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives, museums)
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-GB#!forum/games-and-glams
https://twitter.com/games_glams

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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