BL Labs presentation at Arts and Humanities event, British Libary, Wed 13th October 2013

1. British Library Labs
http://labs.bl.uk
Wednesday 23rd
October 2013, 1800
Art and Humanities Event
British Library
London
Mr Mahendra Mahey
British Library Labs Project Manager
Scholarship and Collections, Digital Scholarship

2. http://labs.bl.uk 2
#bl_labs
Encouraging scholars and
developers to do research
and development with and
across British Library digital
collections and data
British Library Labs is about…

3. http://labs.bl.uk 3
#bl_labs
What activities does Labs do?
• Encourage researchers / developers to do interesting things with BL
digital content (+other) with and across collections (a data driven
approach)
• Competitions, events (hack events)
• Creating an environment where scholars / developers can work
intensively with Library’s digital collections (winners will be resident)
• Work with your ideas
• Help develop tools and services to support digital scholarship
• Case studies for library and research communities

4. http://labs.bl.uk 4
#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

5. http://labs.bl.uk 5
#bl_labs
British Library Digital Collections
• Filter used is…
• Copyright cleared for research
and non-commercial use
• Curated
• Collection Level
Metadata available
• Where is it
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

6. http://labs.bl.uk 6
#bl_labs
Some data / digital collections
British National BibliographyUK Web Archive Data 19th
Century Books
Environmental Sounds
Text-mining of
electronic journals
Book ordering and
anonymised reader
data
Resonance FM
10 year Community
Arts Radio Show
Datasets, Books / Text, Images / Music, Maps, Sounds, Multimedia
http://labs.bl.uk/Digital+Collections

7. http://labs.bl.uk 7
#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

8. http://labs.bl.uk 8
#bl_labs
Ideas from first competition
•Text mining in the reading rooms
•Curatorial
•Visualising large collections of sound at a glance
(thumbnails)
•Using sheet music
•Working with a radio archive
•The winners are…

9. http://labs.bl.uk 9
#bl_labs
Mixing the Library:
The Disc Jockey & the Digital Collection
Dan Norton completed a
PhD at the University of
Dundee and is an Artist in
Residence at Hangar, Centre
for Art and Research, Barcelona.
His idea is to build a ‘mixing’ interface for
interacting with BL digital collections and
wider developed from the DJ's model of
interaction with information.
Dan Norton’s prototype ‘mixing’ interface
Annotation
Preview ‘item’
Selected ‘right’
channel ‘item’
Selected ‘left’
channel ‘item’
Collection ‘stalks’ made of ‘items’. Each ‘item’ is a URL.
The order of the ‘items’ can be ‘shuffled’ and sent to the ‘left’ or ‘right’ channels
‘Play back’ of ‘items’ (Blue)
and annotations (Yellow)

10. http://labs.bl.uk 10
#bl_labs
In this example, the ‘Sample Generator’ searches across 1.8 million bibliographic
records from the 19th
Century for items about ‘Travel Routes’ and where possible
(digitised items permitting) provides unbiased digital ‘samples’ for further research.
Generates a randomised unbiased sample
Work 1
Generated sample URL (unique & citable after creation)
Work
1
Work
2
Work
3
Work
4
Work
5
Work
6
Work
7
Work
8
Terms used: ‘Travel Routes’ from ‘1888-1899’, sample size ‘8’.
Set created on ‘16/10/2013’ by ‘Pieter Francois’
Travel Routes From To1888 1899
Digitally available content only
Account, Tour, Adventure, Visit. Journey, Expedition,
Excursion, Trip, Holiday, Guide, Plan, Route
Sample Size 8 Generate
British Library Labs Sample Generator
1
Travel route extracted from
‘Work 1’ for further research
3
Pieter Francois is a Postdoctoral
Researcher at the University of Oxford.
The ‘Sample Generator’ connects one
or more major catalogues or
collections of digitized texts through
metadata.
The Sample Generator
for Digitised Texts
Search terms
Distribution of items in catalogue
Researcher carries out research on works in
the sample generated. Here it used for the basis
of generating travel routes as shown in 3.
2
Synonyms

11. http://labs.bl.uk 11
#bl_labs
The Mechanical Curator!
• Just launched, lot’s of interest!!
• Randomly selected small illustrations and ornamentations,
posted on the hour, over 420,000 images
• Rediscovered artwork from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th
Century books.
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mechanicalcuratorcuttings
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/post/64017485379/image-from-a-manual-of-elementary-geology

12. http://labs.bl.uk 12
#bl_labs
Workshops – Ideas Labs
• Like Top Trumps
• Datasets
• Ideas
• Outputs
Let us come to you!

13. http://labs.bl.uk 13
#bl_labs
Engaging with Labs…
• AHRC Big Data Call, a number of requests to use BL
Collections / Data
• Next competition and showcase 11 November 2013
• Ideas labs, workshops and hack events at your place!
• Hack Events
– 12 December 2013
– 13 January 2014
– 12 February 2014
– 10 March 2014

14. http://labs.bl.uk 14
#bl_labs
Speak to me: 0207 412 7324
Email me: mahendra.mahey@bl.uk or labs@bl.uk
Labs Website: http://labs.bl.uk/
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?