Bl labs ucl- services, personas

1. 1
@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol labs@bl.uk
http://www.bl.uk/projects/british-library-labs
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Mahendra Mahey
Experiment with our
Digital Collections
Ben O’Steen
Technical Lead
Developing Services for BL Labs at the British Library
BL Labs Roadshow 2018

2. 2
@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol labs@bl.uk
The Future of BL Labs
• Engage with researchers
• Learn what they want to do
• Collect evidence of demand
• Develop Business Model and Support
process to make ‘Business as Usual’ at
the British Library
• Help to create pathway to developing
a ‘Digital Research Suite’ at the
British Library by 2019
http://www.library.pitt.edu/digital-scholarship-services
https://goo.gl/W4TjGt
• Many are being ‘inspired’ by our
model…

3. 3
@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol labs@bl.uk
Labs 3 – Lab for Digital Research @ BL
Business
Model
Scaleable
Services
Scope and pilot ‘Business As Usual’ service

4. 4
@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol labs@bl.uk
Develop Business Model
•Explore, evaluate and implement a business model
•Use Business Model Canvas
•Internal and External Business model
development, implementation and evaluation
groups
•Explore internal and external funding

5. 5
@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol labs@bl.uk
Test, Pilot, Implement Business Model
• Develop support service
– Entry – Improve documentation, includes case studies
– Baseline – Basic enquiry service
– Intermediate – Consultation service
– Advanced – Support 10 projects per year (through application process)
• Augment data.bl.uk
– (e.g. sample datasets, tools, examples of use)
– Pilot use of Jupyter Notebooks / Docker other tools for Open and
Onsite data
• Researcher access to BL APIs
• Reading room services – onsite access / compute to digital collections

6. 6
@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol labs@bl.uk
Business Model Canvas – Digital Research Lab – British Library
Key Partners Key Activities Value Propositions Customer
Relationships
Customer Segments
Key Resources Channels
Cost Structure Revenue Streams
http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com

7. 7
@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol labs@bl.uk
Rosslyn : Master’s student in Comparative
Literature (Researcher Technical)
• Rosslyn wants to speak to somebody about working on a project which will build and analyse a corpus from digitised
literary works and newspaper articles first published from 1950 to the present day. She is particularly interested in how
humorous prose of PG Wodehouse has permeated literary works.
• Rosslyn is confident in using digital research methods and tools to help with her research as her undergraduate degree
was in Computer Science. She is a talented programmer, having contributed to a number of Open Source projects and
winning a number of software development competitions at university.
• Research Question/Enquiry: How has the humorous prose of PG Wodehouse permeated modern literary works?
• Services Required:
• Access to the relevant digital collections and data for her research.
• Advice on the potential legal restrictions on carrying out her work.
• Ability to create and store the corpus and use computational tools to analyse it.
• Share the results under an open access license
• Download the final results of his research, and cite the derived datasets on data.bl.uk.

8. 8
@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol labs@bl.uk
Mike: PhD student in Gender Studies
(Researcher Non-Technical)
• Mike is a gender historian developing research questions around how gender-specific terms are used in writing and how they may
change over time. He thinks he would like to use the UK Web Archive as one of his corpora for this and has a vague idea that he
may need to employ digital research methods after reading an article about natural language processing.
• Mike has never used these methods before and has basic digital skills (e.g. MS Office). Mike would like to sit down with someone to
discuss his idea and get guidance about moving this project forward. He is happy to collaborate with other researchers.
• Research question/Enquiry: How do gender-specific terms change over time in the UK Web Archive?
• Services Required:
• Access to expert information, advice and training on the appropriate digital research methods to use for this project.
• Case studies and connections / collaborations with other researchers who can help him understand their approaches and
experiences using BL digital collections and data for similar projects.
• Getting a clear understanding of the UK Web Archive, how it can be used, its limitations / challenges and whether it is the
appropriate corpus to carry out his research.
• Ability to create and store the corpus and use computational tools to analyse it.
• Share the results under an open access license.
• Download the final results of his research, and cite the derived datasets on data.bl.uk.

9. 9
@BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol labs@bl.uk
Discussion
• Have a look at the Personas
• Write your own, please focus particularly on Digital Skills /
Technical Skills / requirements for support
• We will discuss your needs, challenges and issues.