British Library Labs and Competition Presentation at the Open University

British Library Labs
http://labs.bl.uk
British Library Labs and competition
Friday 7th June 2013, 12:00 – 14:00
CMR01, Digital Humanities, Faculty of Arts,
The Open University.
Mr Mahendra Mahey
British Library Labs Project Manager
Scholarship and Collections, Digital Scholarship

http://labs.bl.uk 2
#bl_labs
Overview
• Background
• Content used with Labs
• Research methods
• The competition and engaging with Labs
• Your ideas

http://labs.bl.uk 3
#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)

http://labs.bl.uk 4
#bl_labs
Our Brand…

http://labs.bl.uk 5
#bl_labs
Background
• Grant from The Andrew Mellon Foundation
• 2 year initial project

http://labs.bl.uk 6
#bl_labs
People involved in Labs
Project
Board
Advisory
Board
Digital
Scholarship
Team
Digital
Curators Access and
Reuse
Group
©
Curators
Labs
Researchers
Developers
Researchers
Developers
British Library
Universities & wider

http://labs.bl.uk 7
#bl_labs
• Michelle Burton
• Maja Maricevic
• Richard Boulderstone
• Kristian Jensen
• 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 Advisory Board
People…Boards

http://labs.bl.uk 8
#bl_labs
• Stella Wisdom
• Nora McGregor
• Aquiles Alencar Brayner
• James Baker
• Rossitza Atanassova
Digital Curators Digital Scholarship
• Aly Conteh
• Adam Farquhar
People…Digital Scholarship Team

http://labs.bl.uk 9
#bl_labs
• Meet regularly (monthly) to decide on licensing of content
that has been submitted for considerations
• Provide policy framework in terms of how to approve
materials for re-use
People…Access / Reuse Working Group

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.

#bl_labs
Labs people
• Labs Manager
• Recruiting a Technical Lead at the moment (shortlisting)
• Ioannis Lagamtzis (Work placement Masters student at
University College London)

#bl_labs
Labs details (1)
• 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

#bl_labs
Lab details (2)
• 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

#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

#bl_labs
The plan in time…
• Launch Event – 25th
March 2013 – draft details of competition and feedback
• Competition details launched end of April, June 26th
deadline
• Virtual 17 May (Video of Hangout Available), more virtual event?
• Hack Event 28/29 May London
• Winners announced at 6 July 2013, York (Digital Heritage Conference)
• Best two ideas will win a residency and one will be awarded £3000 prize and the
other £1000 prize in November
• Other ideas, look at supporting in other ways e.g. through Labs, other Library
departments, Business opportunities etc.
• Case studies produced around Nov/Dec, repeat for 2014

#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

#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

#bl_labs
Labs Hack Days…
• Bringing researchers, developers, curators and anyone
interested with collections together at events
• Virtual Hacks?
• Brainstorming ideas – ideas lab (can try)
• Scoping research, ideas, solving problems and developing
prototypes
• 28/29 May – book!
Brainstorm ideas and group
Consider and choose
Work into the night and show
what has been done

#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

#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)

#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

#bl_labs
http://labs.bl.uk/Digital+Collections
See cards…

#bl_labs
Types of content
• Datasets
• Books / Text
• Images / Music
• Maps
• Sounds
• Multimedia

#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!

#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?

#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?

#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?

#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?

#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?

#bl_labs
Resonance FM
• London Community Arts Radio Show
• http://resonancefm.com/
• 10 year sound archive!
• Speech to text?

#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?

#bl_labs
Competition 2013
• Join our website and mailing list
• Express your interest or tell others
• Virtual event 17 May 2013 (1500 GMT)
• Hack event 28/29 May 2013, London
• Deadline for Submission is 26 June midnight 2013
• Winners announced 6 July 2013
• Working on entry July to November (curatorial and financial support given)
– Ideas need to fit into this time frame, a 4 month time frame
• Other ideas can be worked on too!, Competition is one way to engage
• Showcase in November 2013 and winners get up to £3000!

#bl_labs
Example Research Methods
• Corpus Analysis tools
• Visualisations
• Topic Models
• Location based searching
• Geotagging
• Annotation
• APIs for datasets e.g. Metadata, Images
• Crowdsourcing / Human Computation
• Natural Language Processing
• Transcribing

#bl_labs
Ideas for current competition
• OCR algorithm for Tangut Manuscripts
• Linking BNB data with Author Claim service
• Timelining collections
• Improving access by putting on Wikimedia
• Using item request data
• 3D visulisations of manuscripts
• Text mining in the reading rooms
• Music app
• Repurposing content using Drupal
• Lyme disease a social history
Ideas from
Launch
Event
http://labs.bl.uk/Launch+Event

#bl_labs
Tips and tricks
• Express your interest, ENGAGE with us!
• Submit your name, contact details and lets speak!
• Make sure you understand the competition details
• Think ‘4 months’ and what is realistic to create
– Avoid things that will delay, e.g. long rights clearance
• Use the text version of the form to draft entry
• Deadline 26 June!

#bl_labs
Ideas Lab…
Your ideas…driven by…
• Method 1: Your research area / interest…
– Introductions, scribble on post it note (4 keywords), methods
– ‘Marry up’ with a digital Collection(s) you are interested in, see cards,
website, ask?
• Method 2: Lucky dip?
– Choose a card and then brainstorm, top trumps, whatever works…
– Work with a partner and each choose cards and then brainstorm together
• Method 3: Choose a theme
– Choose a theme and then see which collections fit, then think of an idea to bring
them together
• Method 4: Improving access
– An idea to improve access to the collections
• Method X – Anything that works?

#bl_labs
Speak to me: 0207 412 7324
Email me: mahendra.mahey@bl.uk or labs@bl.uk
Labs Website: http://labs.bl.uk/
Enter our competition!
Twitter: @BL_Labs
Hash Tag: #bl_labs
Jiscmail: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=BL-LABS
Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
What next?

British Library Labs and Competition Presentation at the Open University

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

La actualidad más candente

La actualidad más candente (20)

Similar a British Library Labs and Competition Presentation at the Open University

Similar a British Library Labs and Competition Presentation at the Open University (17)

Más de labsbl

Más de labsbl (20)

Último

Último (20)

British Library Labs and Competition Presentation at the Open University