The British Library Labs provides access to the Library's collections by making digital copies available and searchable online. It allows users to tag and curate collections through crowdsourcing. The Labs has had over 250 million page views in 13 months from over 200,000 contributors adding tags. Crowdsourcing helps improve access and knowledge by getting more perspectives on how to describe items, though tags may not always be precise. The goal is to iteratively improve collections and lower barriers to using the Library's resources for work.

1. So, What is the Labs?
Ben O’Steen ben.osteen@bl.uk
@benosteen
(“Technical Lead, British Library Labs” is my
unhelpful but official title.)

4. The unifying theme to (pretty much)
all the requests used to be:
Give me
EVERYTHING*!
(* unsaid: that might be important to my work)

5. “I am
interested in
travel
accounts in
Europe during
the 19th
Century”

6. 2013 Competition winners
http://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs
Pieter Francois

8. As this is all in the public domain
anyway...
What’s the harm in making it a bit more
accessible?
The Mechanical Curator twitter account has
only got a handful of people following it
after all. Maybe there isn’t much appetite for
it?

11. Impact?
Hard to measure but:
- ~18-20 million hitsevery month, over 250
million in 13 months.
- Over 200,000 tags added.
- Hundreds of contributors.
- Iterative crowdsourcing is ongoing.
- https://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/Commons:
British_Library/Mechanical_Curator_collection/
map_tag_status

12. Look after the few with the time and energy to
make a difference.
Tagging, folksonomies and curating
collections on the fly is key!
Don’t ignore the crowd!
→ Tagged as “map”
Not precise but just one step on the
road to better knowledge.

13. Crowdsourcing in Action:
http://www.bl.uk/maps

14. David Normal
http://www.davidnormal.com/

17. Burning Man Festival
David Normal created light boxes around the
Burning man, using the British Library’s Flickr Images

18. Burning Man Festival

19. Off the Map 2015
•Alice’s Adventures Off the Map
•Part of the British Library's celebrations for the 150th
anniversary of Alice in Wonderland
•http://gamecity.org/alices-adventures-off-the-map/

21. tl;dr
Bringing together Data we already hold and
Researchers who want to do interesting
things.
softening the learning curve, building better
bridges
making temporary things to solve real and
specific problems now, to work out what
general things to take forward