1. Digital Research
Aquiles Alencar-Brayner, Digital Curator
@aquilesbrayner
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitalscholarship/

2. More than resource discovery…
• Libraries and archives have spent the
last two decades making digital assets
and harvesting born-digital objects.
• We can now do much more than use
technology to discover these digital
objects and embrace the opportunities
afforded by an intellectual turn toward
digitally-driven research
• So digital research is about:
– New tools
– New discoveries
– New understanding
www.bl.uk
“The emergence of the new
digital humanities isn’t an
isolated academic
phenomenon. The
institutional and disciplinary
changes are part of a larger
cultural shift, inside and
outside the academy, a
rapid cycle of emergence
and convergence in
technology and culture”
Steven E Jones, Emergence of
the Digital Humanities (2013)
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3. Scalability: how to filter, find and analyse
the information I need?
• How many data is generated in
ONE day?
1. Twitter: 7 TB
2. Facebook: 10 TB
• By 2020 we will have
approximately 35 ZB (1.1 Trillion
GB) of Data available
www.bl.uk
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4. British Library Resources
• Digitised content:
• http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts
• Born-digital collections
• http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/
• http://sounds.bl.uk/
• Collaborative projects:
• http://www.europeana-collections-1914-1918.eu/
• Google Books (250,000 1700-1870 publications)
www.bl.uk
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5. Some BL digital platforms
• Shakespeare quartos
• http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html
• Crowdsourcing:
• http://www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish/maplisten.html
• Codex Sinaiticus
• http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/
www.bl.uk
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6. Exploring BL collections
• BL Labs: http://labs.bl.uk/home
eg. British Library Mechanical Curator
Unlocking design
• Social Media:
Wikimedia Commons
Pinterest
Google Maps
Flickr
HistoryPin
www.bl.uk
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7. Curation e-Manuscripts
• Extracting and archiving digital
content from personal devices
• Assist with capture, management,
description, and preservation of
personal digital collections to
facilitate access and content analysis
• Data analysis beyond documents
www.bl.uk
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8. Advancing research: aggregation, content sharing,
annotation, transcription & analysis
• Discovery: Online catalogues
Copac: http://copac.ac.uk/
Worldcat: http://www.worldcat.org/
• Annotation: iiif (International Image Interoperability Framework) – Stanford
University / BL / BnF and others
• Transcription: Transcribe Bentham
• Analysis and visualisation: Mapping metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus
(University of Glasgow): http://bit.ly/1igGO9D
• http://news.ls.wisc.edu/humanities-the-arts/collaborative-project-pushesdiscovery-in-humanities-computer-sciences/
www.bl.uk
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9. New Tools, New Discoveries
• Google Books N gram
New ways in to extract
information from textual
databases
• Off the Map
Creativity using BL digital
collection
• Open Access Software for
Research:
http://sourceforge.net/
www.bl.uk
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10. Other projects of interest
• Literary networks
• http://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet2.pdf
• Georeferencing texts
• http://ulysses.bc.edu/
• Other examples
• http://litlab.stanford.edu/?page_id=13
www.bl.uk
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11. Task time
For the next 15 minutes, break into groups (of 6-10)
and consider one or all of the following questions:
– What analytical tools(s) would you like to use/develop for your
research?
– What are the ethical considerations when using digital data?
– Should all research in Humanities be published openly?
– How might computational methods change the nature of
collaboration in Humanities?
Be prepared to offer a short response which captures the thoughts of your group!
www.bl.uk
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12. Thank you!
@AquilesBrayner
Follow the Digital Scholarship Blog:
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
www.bl.uk
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