Digital Research Support at British Library
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Presentation for the British Library Doctoral Open Day for 20th & 21st Century Collections on 26 February 2018
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Digital Research Support at British Library
- 1. Digital Research Support @ British Library Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator 20th & 21st Century Collections Doctoral Open Day 2018
- 2. www.bl.uk 2 Meet the Digital Research Team We support researchers in the innovative use of British Library's digital collections and data through: • Working behind the scenes to get content in digital form and online • Offering digital research support and guidance • Supporting collaborative projects • Running events, competitions, and awards
- 3. www.bl.uk 3 Defining Digital Research Using computational methods either to answer existing research questions or to challenge existing theoretical paradigms…. Geocoding Data Visualisation Data Mining Georeferencing Crowdsourcing Text mining Collaboration
- 4. www.bl.uk 4
- 5. www.bl.uk 5 Big Data + Old History https://youtu.be/tp4y-_VoXdA
- 6. www.bl.uk 6 Political Meetings Mapper “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 5,519 meetings discovered in 462 towns and villages across the UK http://politicalmeetingsmapper.co.uk/maps
- 7. www.bl.uk 7 Political Meetings Mapper https://youtu.be/0lx0CL_dsQs
- 8. www.bl.uk 8 Creating a Chronotopic Ground for the Mapping of Literary Texts: Innovative Data Visualisation and Spatial Interpretation in the Digital Medium http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/projects?ref=AH%2FP00895X%2F1 http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2017/mapping-project-will-open-up-new- routes-to-uncharted-territory/ http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/professor-sally-bushell/literary-mapping-in- digit_b_17319788.html
- 9. www.bl.uk 9
- 10. www.bl.uk 10 Lakescraft is an AHRC funded project that uses the Minecraft platform to engage schoolchildren with the literary and cultural landscape of the Lake District. Using data from the Corpus of Lake District writing at Lancaster University, to create an interdisciplinary educational resource that enables pupils to undertake activities in an accurately modelled digital 3D environment. https://thelakescraftproject.wordpress.com/
- 11. www.bl.uk 11 The Litcraft component of the project is a semi-standalone series of developments aimed at encouraging elements of literary environmental criticism for younger audiences. Primary and secondary English lessons do not typically focus on the descriptions of textual setting; one of our aims is to introduce this analytic field, through designing a series of standalone gaming-based resources that engage with landscape and world design. https://chronotopiccartography.wordpress.com/litcraft/
- 12. www.bl.uk 12 29th October to 4th November 2017 http://games.ala.org/international-games-week http://games.ala.org/gaming-at-the-british-library
- 13. www.bl.uk 13
- 14. www.bl.uk 14 State of Dementia Research in the UK Research Question: The Alzheimer’s Society appointed RAND Europe to produce a report on the state of dementia research in the UK. RAND wished to investigate the dementia workforce pipeline - how many researchers are working on dementia and how this is changing over time. http://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/mapping-uk-dementia-research-landscape.html Source Collection: British Library’s electronic thesis service EThOS http://ethos.bl.uk Digital/Computational Techniques: EThOS Metadata Manager and RAND analysed a list of theses awarded from 1970 onwards. Outcome: Discovered dementia-related PhD research has been steadily increasing over the last 30 years in the UK, however, cancer-related PhDs have skyrocketed over the same time frame. Now five times more PhD researchers choose to work on cancer than dementia: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/science/2015/09/a-novel-use-of-phd-data.html A Review of the Dementia Research Landscape and Workforce Capacity in the United Kingdom http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1186.html As an extensive source of information on PhDs undertaken in the UK, EThOS data can also be used to look at trends in PhD research over time.
- 15. www.bl.uk 15 EThOS & Multimedia PhD Theses Coral Manton worked on a British Library research placement investigating multimedia and non-text PhD research outputs and how EThOS might develop to meet the challenge of evolving digital theses. She interviewed doctoral students from various disciplines as case studies http://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2016/09/multimedia-phd-research-and-non-text-theses.html https://www.bl.uk/case-studies/sam-martin https://www.bl.uk/case-studies/rob-sherman
- 16. www.bl.uk 16 How we can help you We work with those operating at the intersection of academic research, cultural heritage and technology to support new ways of exploring and accessing our collections through: – Working behind the scenes to support and improve processes for getting content in digital form and online – Collaborate with research groups on projects – Offer digital research support and guidance – Events, competitions, and awards (BL Labs)
- 17. www.bl.uk 17 Finding Digitised Collections Some places to start… • In the catalogue (Access Options: Online “I want this”) • Consult subject pages: http://www.bl.uk/subjects • Digitised Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ • Early Music Online: www.earlymusiconline.org/ • British Library Sounds: http://sounds.bl.uk/ • Collections & Discover sections on www.bl.uk • Endangered Archives: http://eap.bl.uk/database/collections.a4d • International Dunhuang Project: http://idp.bl.uk/pages/collections.a4d • Online Gallery: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ • Flickr (Public Domain): https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/albums • Wikimedia Commons(Public Domain): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Collections_of_the_British_Library Particularly the Synoptic Index: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:British_Library/Mechanical_Curator_collection/Synoptic_index • Data.bl.uk and Collection Metadata http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html
- 18. www.bl.uk 18 Ordering Images for Research/Publication: British Library Imaging Services provide a range of products to suit your needs, whether that’s private research or commercial publication Images of some of our collections are already available to buy and download straight away through Images Online (https://imagesonline.bl.uk), so you should check there first before ordering from our Imaging Services (https://www.bl.uk/imaging-services/ordering-images).
- 22. www.bl.uk 22
- 23. www.bl.uk 23
- 24. www.bl.uk 24 David Normal created light boxes around the Burning man, using the British Library’s Flickr Images The Crossroads of Curiosity Installation at Burning Man Festival
- 25. www.bl.uk 25 The Crossroads of Curiosity Installation at the British Library June to November 2015 The installation featured an “augmented reality” self-guided tour enabling viewers to explore the meaning and origins of the painting’s symbols using Blippar. www.crossroadsofcuriosity.com http://www.bl.uk/events/the-crossroads-of-curiosity-installation
- 26. www.bl.uk 26 Datasets data.bl.uk As part of its work to open its data to wider use, the British Library is making copies of some of its datasets available for research and creative purposes. We aim to describe collections in terms of their data format (images, full text, metadata, etc.), licences, temporal and geographic scope, originating purpose (e.g. specific digitisation projects or exhibitions) and collection, and related subjects or themes. This site is a 'beta', and is in development. If you have questions or feedback about this site or our open data work, please email digitalresearch@bl.uk. We'd also love to hear what you've done or made with the data.
- 27. www.bl.uk 27 In the Spotlight https://www.libcrowds.com/collection/playbills http://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2017/11/youre-invited-to-come-and-play-in-the-spotlight.html
- 28. www.bl.uk 28
- 29. www.bl.uk 29 Have a digital research enquiry? Get in touch! Web: http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/ Email: digitalresearch@bl.uk Twitter: : @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital
Editor's Notes
- Set up in 2010 the team was formed as a way of dedicating focus on the changing research landscape in the digital realm. Now embedded in collection areas, and as you’ll see later, joining the library explicitly as part of major digitisation projects. Main activities: Getting content in digital form and online Collaborations, Competitions & Awards Digital research support and guidance
- One way is through the British Library Labs project and the Digital Curator team which make up the Digital Research Team. The aim of the lab is to encourage scholars to experiment at scale with our digital collections and data. The team holds competitions, events, and creates the space in which to engage with scholars working in this realm. Through the labs we’re learning how to better support scholars and build new services.
- Research Question: Chartism was the biggest popular movement for democracy in 19th Century British history. They campaigned for the vote for all men. The Chartists advertised their meeting in the Northern Star newspaper from 1838 to 1850. The question is, how many of the meetings took place and where? We started with 1841-1845. Source Collections: 19th Century Digitised Newspapers, specifically Northern Star newspaper Digitised and Georeferenced Map of Oxford Street Digital/Computational Techniques: The images of the relevant pages of the Northern Star were run through an Optical Character Recognition program (Abbyy Finereader 12) and the resulting text was checked manually. We developed a set of Python codes to extract and geo-code the place of meeting, using a gazetteer of places, and parse the date of the meeting. Outcome: 5,519 meetings discovered in 462 towns and villages across the UK! http://politicalmeetingsmapper.co.uk/maps/
- Research Question: Chartism was the biggest popular movement for democracy in 19th Century British history. They campaigned for the vote for all men. The Chartists advertised their meeting in the Northern Star newspaper from 1838 to 1850. The question is, how many of the meetings took place and where? We started with 1841-1845. Source Collections: 19th Century Digitised Newspapers, specifically Northern Star newspaper Digitised and Georeferenced Map of Oxford Street Digital/Computational Techniques: The images of the relevant pages of the Northern Star were run through an Optical Character Recognition program (Abbyy Finereader 12) and the resulting text was checked manually. We developed a set of Python codes to extract and geo-code the place of meeting, using a gazetteer of places, and parse the date of the meeting. Outcome: 5,519 meetings discovered in 462 towns and villages across the UK! http://politicalmeetingsmapper.co.uk/maps/
- With an algorithm by Ben O’Steen we snipped out images from digitised books and put them on to Flickr on December 13 2013, there were over a million, but the problem we had was that we knew which books they came from (author/dates), but we didn’t’ have any information about the images. By releasing them onto flickr, we have got people to start tagging them and using them in very creative ways. Hosting them internally was not an option and there was not sufficient metadata to put them on Wikipedia. Flickr seemed the obvious option as it is a platform that can support high usage, did not require metadata, allowed tagging and it is free for public domain images.
- He speaks about his project, how he came across the images and what he did with them. How he learnt about the image = it was pure serendipity Taking images out of the context of books creates potential to reinvent them in a new context. http://youtu.be/3AOa98RsA2Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3AOa98RsA2Q#t=48 Make sure subtitles are on.
- This is a surprising use of the images we put onto Flickr. Once a year in the summer, tens of thousands of participants gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance. They depart one week later, having left no trace whatsoever. [This year it took place between August 25 to September 1, Nevada, USA, the show ends by burning an effigy of wooden man! <click>] American Artist David Normal used images from your Flickr Commons collection and worked on a set of collages called "Crossroads of Curiosity". The finished paintings based on these collages were presented in full colour as ' lightboxes at this year's Burning Man Festival, the theme for which was "Caravansary“. They were presented around the base of the effigy of the Burning Man in the heart of the festival.