1.
1@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
British Library Labs, Ideas and Projects
Mahendra Mahey
1300 – 1320, Wednesday, 26th
October 2016
British Library Labs, Ideas and Projects
Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.
https://goo.gl/gy1IU4

2.
2@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
http://www.bl.uk/projects/british-library-labs
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

3.
3@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Cultural Heritage Datasets
Datasets about our collections
Bibliographic datasets relating to our published
and archival holdings
Datasets for content mining
Content suitable for use in text and data mining
research
Datasets for image analysis
Image collections suitable for large-scale image-
analysis-based research
Datasets from UK Web Archive
Data and API services available for accessing UK
Web Archive
Digital mapping
Geospatial data, cartographic applications, digital
aerial photography and scanned historic map
materials http://data.bl.uk
Official launch November 7, 2016
Discussion list: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CULTURAL-HERITAGE-DATASETS

4.
4@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Competition
Awards
Projects
Tell us your ideas of what to do with our digital
content
Show us what you have already done with our digital content in
research, artistic, commercial and learning and teaching
categories
Talk to us about working on collaborative projects

5.
5@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
2016 • 18 institutions visited
• 5000 miles travelled
• 50 presentations & 25 workshops
• 730 researchers
• 250 expressions of interest
• 40 researchers, artists, entrepreneurs &
educators supported
• 60TB of data via post
• 9TB of data via data.bl.uk (Nov 16)
• Nearly half a billion views on BL Flickr
Commons since launch in Dec 2013

6.
6@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Wider…not just Researches
Researchers
https://goo.gl/WutNyi
Artists
http://goo.gl/nNKhQ2
Librarians
Curators
https://goo.gl/9NWZUW
Software Developers
https://goo.gl/7QQ5Tf
Archivists
https://goo.gl/x7b4tg
Educators
https://goo.gl/qh01Mi

7.
7@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Why are doing this?
• Working closely with and listening to those who want use
our digital collections and data for their work and helping to
build services, tools and processes to support them
• We can learn how we are and should be supporting them.
– Is the access to digital collections we provide sufficient?
– Do we have the right tools?
– Do we provide the right support?
– Where are the gaps between what they want and what we
can give?
– How do we build the bridges to overcome them?
– Many more reasons…

8.
8@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Some Lessons Learned so far…
• Everything starts from an idea and conversation!
• Need to have several conversations with several stakeholders and tap
into their tacit knowledge that isn’t always written down.
• Expectations change when researchers see the data, systems and
experience the ‘culture’ of the organisation
• We tend to work with researchers who can be ‘flexible’ with their research
questions and are willing to embrace challenges
• Often misunderstandings because of jargon & different meaning of words
• Embrace dirty data, it may never be perfect!

9.
9@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Some Lessons Learned so far…(2)
• Many researchers have the domain knowledge but lack the technical
skills to use Digital Research methods. Should they be teamed up with
those that have problems that need solving (Computing) or get trained?
• Identifying / bridging gaps for researchers to use data, help them
navigate through the Library to get the data they want
• Huge appetite to use digital content & data (e.g. Flickr Commons stats)
• Start small and simple, but think big!
• Embrace serendipity, work fast, give it energy.
• Learn the lessons, tell the positive stories and move on!
• Fail faster (don’t be afraid), small experiments, reject perfectionism

10.
10@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Ideas?

11.
11@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Finding things in messy data
Mrs Folly
• Clean up manually
• Get ‘ground truth’
• Write code to find things
reliably in it automatically
• Try code on messy content
• Tweak if necessary

12.
12@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Victorian Meme Machine (2014)
https://goo.gl/HMqDt3
Bob Nicholson
http://victorianhumour.tumblr.com/

13.
13@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Katrina Navickas (2015)
Political Meetings Mapper
http://politicalmeetingsmapper.co.uk
https://goo.gl/Qq78Oa
Labs Symposium 2015
https://goo.gl/BSA3be
Interview 2015
The Chartist Newspaper
http://goo.gl/vOLSnH
Chartist Monster Meeting

14.
14@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Finalists 2016
Hannah-Rose Murray
PhD student, University of Nottingham
Black Abolitionist Performances and their Presence in
Britain
Luda Karen Brian
Hannah-Rose
Luda Zhao, Karen Wang (Masters Students at Stanford
University), Brian Do (Harvard Medicine and PhD student)
SherlockNet: Using Convolutional Neural Networks to
Automatically Tag and Caption the British Library
Collection

15.
15@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Runners up 2016 – Nov 16 – Mar 17
Michael Takeo Magruder
Exploring the British Library’s digital collection of historic
urban maps to create provocative fictional cityscapes for
the Information Age
Data-mining for verse in
eighteenth-century newspapers
Jennifer Batt
University of Bristol

16.
16@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Artistic / Creative Works
http://goo.gl/dM8ieA
Mario Klingeman
http://www.crossroadsofcuriosity.com
David Normal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GRgj7Q5OM0
Rob Walker
http://goo.gl/bNxGZZ
Kris Hoffman
https://goo.gl/QilqqT
Jiayi Chong
Ling Low
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcOP1E5bRE0
https://www.facebook.com/RealmlandStory/
Paul Rand Pierce

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17@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Commercial (2015)
Etsy project by Dina Malkova
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DinaMalkova
https://goo.gl/OfJujM
Labs Symposium 2015
http://goo.gl/pbxZUv

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18@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Commercial (2015) Runner Up
Sarah Wingate-Gray and Kate Lomax
http://goo.gl/s1dVSC

19.
19@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Special Jury’s Prize (2015)
James Heald – Wikimedia and Map work
https://goo.gl/WYZCB2
http://goo.gl/HNQq5e
https://goo.gl/VPgffL
https://commons.wikimedia.org/
https://goo.gl/djtm1b
Labs Symposium (2015)Geotagging maps
54,000 Maps

20.
20@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
More BL Labs ideas for inspiration!
http://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs http://labs.bl.uk/Other+Uses+of+Collections

21.
21@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Labs Symposium 2016
• Monday 7 November 2016, 0930 - 1730
• St Pancras, Conference Centre
• FREE, book now!
https://goo.gl/2twnr5

22.
22@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/gy1IU4
Other Labs connected events in 2016
• 7 November – We Are Amused! A Night of Victorian Humour
– https://goo.gl/QASR6K
• 12 November – The Way Ahead? Map Making and Digital Skills for
Geography Teaching
– https://goo.gl/f014YR
• 26 November – Walking Tour
– https://goo.gl/ix1zl2