1. British Library Labs
http://labs.bl.uk
British Library Labs and competition
Wednesday 31st
July 2013, 1030 – 1230
Going Digital: Closing Conference: Future Digital
The Open University (room 2), Camden Town Campus
London
Mr Mahendra Mahey
British Library Labs Project Manager
Scholarship and Collections, Digital Scholarship
4. http://labs.bl.uk 4
#bl_labs
• Stella Wisdom
• Nora McGregor
• Aquiles Alencar Brayner
• James Baker
• Rossitza Atanassova
Digital Curators
Digital Scholarship
Digital Scholarship Team and BL Staff
Labs
• Aly Conteh
• Collection Digitisation Programme
Manager
• Adam Farquhar
• Head of Digital Scholarship
• Mahendra Mahey
• Technical Lead in recruitment (27
June)
• Had work placement student from UCL
(Ioannis Lagamtzis)
Access and Reuse Group
• Regularly meet monthly to approve a
license for content
6. http://labs.bl.uk 6
#bl_labs
“Every book tells a story, but
what can 68,000 books tell
you?”
The project in a nutshell…
Encouraging scholars and developers to do
research and development with and across British
Library collections and data (+other)
9. http://labs.bl.uk 9
#bl_labs
• Michele Burton
• Head of Trusts and Foundations
• Maja Maricevic
• Head of Higher Education
(Higher Education, Audiences
Division)
• Richard Boulderstone
• Chief Digital Officer
• Kristian Jensen
• Head of Arts and Humanities
(Arts and Humanities, Collections
Division)
• Professor Tim Hitchcock (Digital Humanities)
– University of Hertfordshire
• Professor Andrew Prescott (Digital Humanities)
– King’s College London
• Bill Thompson (Technology writer)
- BBC
• Professor Claire Warwick (Digital Humanities)
- University College London
• David De Roure – Professor of e-research
- Oxford e-research centre
Project Board
Library Staff
Advisory Board
External
People…Boards
10. http://labs.bl.uk 10
#bl_labs
People - Library curators
• Around 200 curators at the Library
• Find the digital collections / data and engage with the
curators and where appropriate promote on Labs website
• Curators sometimes suggest ideas for usage, research,
development
• Participate in events, meetings etc.
11. http://labs.bl.uk 11
#bl_labs
Labs details…what
• No digitisation involved, just digitized and born digital Library content
• Some content online
• Other in digital form but not online yet
– e.g. too big, needs work, technical challenges, license restrictions
(e.g. onsite access etc.)
• Examine and analyse the content, especially entire collections (i.e.
cross collection research)
• Do research, publish
• Make things, e.g. tools, services, apps etc…
• Transforming processes, services and tools for scholars / developers
using Library digital collections
12. http://labs.bl.uk 12
#bl_labs
Lab details…how
• Competitions, events and various activities
• Creating environment where scholars / developers can
work intensively with Library’s digital collections (winners will
be resident), but not only…
• Encourage research / developers generally to do
interesting things with BL digital content (+other) with and
across collections
• Labs is more than the competition just speak to us!
• Ideas can be pursued by talking to Library staff , scholars /
developers interested in conducting research / making
things, e.g. meetings, events etc, business opportunities
13. http://labs.bl.uk 13
#bl_labs
How Labs works…
BL LabsCompetition
Events
Contact
Software
Publications
Tools and
services to
support Digital
Scholarship
BL Digital
Collection /
Data
idea
BL Digital
Collection /
Data
Other Digital
Collection
idea
idea
idea
idea
14. http://labs.bl.uk 14
#bl_labs
The plan in time…
• Launch Event – 25th
March 2013 – draft details of competition and feedback, launched end
of April
• Virtual 17 May (Video of Hangout Available), more virtual event?
• Hack Event 28/29 May London
• AHRC research network - 'the infinite archive‘, Open University, University of Nottingham,
University of Warwick
• Winners announced at 6 July 2013, York (Digital Heritage Conference)
• Best two ideas work in residence and showcase their work on the 11th
November 2013,
when the next competition will be launched, deadline end of March 2014, work on entry May
to end of October 2014, Nov/Dec Showcase
• Other ideas, look at supporting in other ways e.g. through Labs, other Library departments,
Business opportunities etc.
• Case studies produced around Nov/Dec for first iteration 2013 and second iteration 2014
15. http://labs.bl.uk 15
#bl_labs
Labs Competition
• At least 2 Competitions
• Review and feedback to examine approach
• Winners will work ‘in residence’ where possible
• Focus particularly on cross collection research, research at
scale
• Other research and development encouraged too!
• Help develop tools and services to support digital
scholarship
• Any suggestions for next competition? When to visit?
16. http://labs.bl.uk 16
#bl_labs
BL Labs Services
• Developed for scholars / developers wanting to use digital
Library collections for research and development
• Application Programming Interface (APIs) for data /
collections
• Powerful interface for researchers and developers for
conducting innovative and transformative projects
• Lead by Technical lead
17. http://labs.bl.uk 17
#bl_labs
Labs Hack Days…
• Bringing researchers, developers, curators and anyone
interested with collections together at events, want to do
more!
• Brainstorming ideas – ideas lab (can try)
• Scoping research, ideas, solving problems and developing
prototypes
• Watch this space
Brainstorm ideas and group
Consider and choose
Work into the night and show
what has been done
18. http://labs.bl.uk 18
#bl_labs
Case studies…
• Research generated from the competitions and general
activity of Labs
• Inform the Library / Other libraries around the world about
the issues, challenges, solutions and benefits generated
when using a Labs approach
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#bl_labs
Labs Content
• Work with curators to identify those digital collections that
are suitable for Labs
• Focus on those that are copyright cleared at the moment
• Others considered in light of challenges, i.e. in scope for
Labs work
• Engage researchers/developers with these materials
through meetings, road-shows, hack days, promotions
(including competitions and events)
• Started off with a list of over 300 digital collections
• Needed a filter
21. http://labs.bl.uk 21
#bl_labs
British Library Digital Collections
• Most content unique!
• Copyright cleared for research
and non-commercial use?
• Curated?
• Collection Level
Metadata available?
Available
only in
Reading
Rooms
Available
on site
Digital but
not online –
various storage
devices
Available only onsite at the moment
Hack Events, In residence
Digital and
online
24. http://labs.bl.uk 24
#bl_labs
British National Bibliographic Data
• bnb.data.bl.uk
• 2.6 Million individual records
• Title, Author, Subject, Descriptions and
more of books and journals published or
distributed in the UK and Ireland since
1950.
• Available as Linked Open Data, Basic
RDF/XML and Marc21.
• An excellent resource for uncovering
publishing trends across the decades,
and augmenting records!
25. http://labs.bl.uk 25
#bl_labs
UK Web Archive Data
• data.webarchive.org.uk/o
pendata
• An example dataset is
the JISC UK Web
Domain Dataset (1996-
2010) which is a 32TB
subset of the Internet
Archive’s web collection
relating to the UK.
• Comparing events across
media types?
26. http://labs.bl.uk 26
#bl_labs
19th
Century Digitised Books
• 68,000 digitised volumes and their
accompanying JP2, PDF, metadata
and OCR text files
• Many rare or inaccessible books
published between 1789 and 1914
and covers a wide range of subject
areas including philosophy, history,
poetry and literature, travel
• Representative materials here:
britishlibrary19c.tumblr.com
• Text mining?
27. http://labs.bl.uk 27
#bl_labs
International Dunhuang Project
• IDP international collaboration
• images of all manuscripts,
paintings, textiles and artefacts
from Dunhuang and
archaeological sites of the Eastern
Silk Road freely available on the
Internet and to encourage their
use through educational and
research programmes
• http://idp.bl.uk/
• Time-lining the silk road?
28. http://labs.bl.uk 28
#bl_labs
Book ordering data…
• Every day thousands of items are ordered up from the
library stacks and delivered to researchers in our reading
rooms. We can provide daily anonymised reports of these
titles including shelfmark information and reading room
location
• Visualising what readers are reading?
Anonymised reader data…
• Anonymised information about our readers
• Big buckets
• Social trends?
29. http://labs.bl.uk 29
#bl_labs
Bringing Text Mining to the Library
Many electronic journals we have negotiated text mining
rights for (50%) journals
A project to get the tools to readers?
30. http://labs.bl.uk 30
#bl_labs
Environment and Nature Sounds
• thousands of recordings from the Sound Archive's unrivalled
natural sounds collection is available for free download as
MP3’s to staff and students UK higher and further education
institutions
• http://sounds.bl.uk/Environment/
• Adding sounds to poetry?
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#bl_labs
Ideas from first competition
• Text mining in the reading rooms
• Curatorial – funded through other stream
• Visualising large collections of sound at a glance
• Using sheet music – combined with AHRC proposal being submitted
now
• Working with a radio archive – possibly funded through another stream
– semantic media
• Serious news
35. http://labs.bl.uk 35
#bl_labs
Dan Norton
• Mixing the Library: The Disc Jockey and the Digital Collection
• Dan Norton is a PhD Researcher on the Digital Economy Project; SerenA, Chance
Encounters in the Space of Ideas, based at the University of Dundee and is Artist in
Residence at Hangar, Centre for Art and Research, Barcelona.
• Builds an interface for interacting in digital collections developed from the DJ's interaction
with information. His project uses selecting and mixing as creative behaviours for
exploring, learning, and authoring with digital collections.
• The prototype will demonstrate the interface requirements necessary for collecting,
enriching (organizing, annotating),and mixing information from digital libraries; for building
aesthetic, experimental, or logical links between resources; and for developing ad hoc
visualizations, or publishing annotated data.
• The template to be produced during the project will inform future developments of a fully
functioning platform for learning and authoring in digital collections, by selecting, mixing,
and sequencing.
36. http://labs.bl.uk 36
#bl_labs
Pieter Francois
• The Sample Generator for Digitised Texts
• Pieter Francois is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford.
• The ‘Sample Generator for Digitized Texts’ is a relatively simple piece of software which
connects one or more major catalogues or bibliographies with one or more collections of
digitized texts through the metadata.
• The ‘Sample Generator’ allows users to create custom-made samples of fully digitized
texts that mirror the distribution of certain key parameters, like genre, year and place of
publication, language, gender of the author, ..., as found within the catalogues and
bibliographies. Whereas the applicability of the ‘Sample Generator’ is universal, this
proposal will focus on testing out this novel approach by connecting the nineteenth-century
holdings of the Integrated Catalogue of the British Library with the ‘19th Century Books’
digital collection.
• The main aim is to tell the story of over a million nineteenth-century books through a
structured sampling of 68,000 books.
37. http://labs.bl.uk 37
#bl_labs
Engaging with Labs
• Express your interest, ENGAGE with us!
• Submit your name, contact details and lets speak!
• AHRC Big Data Call, people are contacting Labs to work
with our data or to collaborate on proposals
• Next competition? Launch 11 November!
• Just talk to us, work with our collections!
