1. Digital Scholarship Training
@ British Library
Aquiles Alencar-Brayner
Digital Curator
#bldigital

2. www.bl.uk 2
The British Library is the
national library
of the UK.
By law we receive a copy of
every publication
produced in the UK and
Ireland.
If you saw 5 items a day it
would take you 80,000
years to see the whole
collection

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Over 150 Million items
are stored in London and in
Yorkshire
But…as we digitise and
collect born-digital, the
Library is becoming as
much a place full of
data as it is a place full of
physical stuff, and there is a
growing community of
users who see it that way.
http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/quickinfo/facts/

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Meet the Digital Research Team
The Digital Research Team is a cross-
disciplinary mix of curators, researchers,
librarians and technologists supporting
the creation and innovative use
of British Library's digital collections.

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What we do…
• We work with staff and researchers operating at the intersection of
academic research, cultural heritage and technology to support new
ways of exploring and accessing our collections through:
– Getting content in digital form and online
– Collaborative projects
– Offering digital research support and guidance
– Running events, competitions, and awards (BL Labs)
http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship

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Encoded in the Job Description
• To encourage, support and assist curators in Collection areas
to realise their vision of integrating a variety of formats into a
seamless research experience or of digitising particular parts of
the Library’s collections
• To train staff throughout the Library in the opportunities for and
practices of digital scholarship.

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How to define Digital Scholarship?
Using computational methods
either to answer existing research
questions or to challenge existing
theoretical paradigms….
(list courses here?)
Geotagging
Data Visualisation
Data Mining
Georeferencing
Digital Mapping
Crowdsourcing
Text mining
Collaboration

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Example: Political Meetings Mapper
How many Chartists meetings were
held from 1838 to 1850 and where
were they held?
5,519 meetings discovered in 462
towns and villages across
the UK!
Sources:
• BL digitized 19th century
newspapers
• BL geo-referenced
historic maps
• BL playbills collection
“I was able to do in minutes
with a python code what I’d
spent the last ten years trying
to do by hand!”
-Dr. Katrina Navickas, BL
Labs Winner 2015

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The Training Programme
The Digital Scholarship Training
Programme is an internal staff
training initiative by the Digital
Curator team that launched in
November 2012.
Developed 19 bespoke courses to
help us situate our collections and
expertise in the realm of digital
research, exploring opportunities
and challenges.
Delivered 88 courses to over 400
staff members so far!

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Some courses
• 101 What is Digital Scholarship?
• 103 Digitisation at British Library
• 104 Communicating our collections online
• 105 Crowdsourcing in Libraries, Museums and Cultural Heritage Institutions
• 107 Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly Research
• and Digital Mapping
• 109 Information Integration: Mash-ups, API’s and The Semantic Web
• 110 Managing digital research information
• 114 Foundations in working with Digital Objects: From Images to A/V
• 115 Metadata for Electronic Resources: Dublin Core, METS, MODS, RDF, XML
• 118 Cleaning up Data
• 119 Programming in Libraries

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• Staff across all collection areas are familiar and conversant with the
foundational concepts, methods and tools of digital scholarship.
• Staff are empowered to innovate.
• Collaborative digital initiatives flourish across subject areas within
the Library as well as externally.
• Our internal capacity for training and skill-sharing in digital
scholarship are a shared responsibility across the Library.
Training programme: goals

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• Hands-on, practical exercises
• Time to explore innovative digital projects
• Trying new tools, particularly with BL or similar collections
• The expertise and enthusiasm of instructors
• Meeting colleagues and learning about BL projects
Participants most appreciated...

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• Case studies / real world examples help
• Articulate learning outcomes, expected results for exercises
• Provide clear, printable instructions
• No more than 15 people in hands-on courses
• Allow time for all to complete exercises
• Build in optional activities for advanced participants
Practical Best Practices/Tips Gleaned

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Inspired…Big Data History of Music
How can vast amounts of bibliographic data held by research libraries
be unlocked for music researchers to analyse?
Can this data be interrogated in ways that challenge the traditional
narratives of music history?
Analyses and
visualisations exposed
previously uncharted
patterns in the history of
music, for instance the
rise and fall of music
printing in 16th- and 17th-
century Europe (huge
dips in output in Venice
were down to plague and
war).

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2016/2017 Priorities courses will reflect
• Digitisation pipeline - keen to understand and help improve
• Crowdsourcing support – start-up, design & promotion
• OCR/HTR – development and application (transcription)
• Digital publishing – interim, strategic and external platforms
• Data wrangling – support for retro conversion
• Semantic enrichment - TEI and other mark-up
• Programming/scripting – tips for making work easier
• Digital Scholarship – better understand landscape to reach new users

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Opportunities for improvements:
• Reaching staff who are keen and could most make use of
the information but have not yet engaged
• Providing guidance and support to staff who are looking to
implement what they have learned
• Addressing more explicitly the challenges and opportunities
for doing digital research with complex collection materials,
particularly our vast non-Western materials

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Reaching staff who have not yet engaged
• Offer shorter (One/Two hour) teasers for popular subjects
• Describe courses so they more clearly articulate relevance
to daily context
• Offer informal drop-in Hack & Yack Style events
• Arrange DH talks relevant to collection area, followed by
how-to/hands on workshops
• Continuously and closely engage with our collection areas
to ensure courses are always filling a need/relevant.

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Guidance and Support for Implementation
• Digital Curators now represented on all major
Infrastructure Projects
• Getting started guides on internal wiki
• Monthly Hack and Yack
• Monthly Digital Scholarship Reading Group

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Bettering our understanding of DH
opportunities in non-Western contexts
• Digital Curators are being hired specifically as part of new
digitisation projects
• Hebrew Manuscripts
• Two Centuries of Indian Print
• Look to appoint folks for brief periods of time to investigate and
report on priority
content areas
• PhD Placement: Profiling the Digital Humanities Landscape in
China
• This information will feed back into development of courses for
future.

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Digital Curators in Digitisation Projects
Digital Curator, Hebrew Manuscripts,
exploring and experimenting with
different types of digital tools on the
Hebrew collection, e.g. 3D modelling,
annotations, data visualisations,
image processing, spatial
representation and others.
Digital Curator, Two Centuries
Indian Print, exploring OCR
technologies for Bengali Print
and digital research
approaches to Book History.

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Identify key individuals, institutions, and
major centres of activity in this area, both
in East Asia and globally
Identify notable and representative Digital
Humanities projects and research being
undertaken in this area
Articulate how cultural /societal/
technological/ governmental policies
may be having an impact on the adoption of
computational methods in humanistic studies in
East Asia
Suggest where possible opportunities/barriers and current trends in this area
may lie, particularly in light of the Library’s services and collections.
PhD Placement: Profiling the Digital
Humanities Landscape in China

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Getting in touch
Web: http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship
Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
Email: digitalresearch@bl.uk
@BL_DigiSchol #bldigital