Talk given to EuropeanaTech 2015.

1. Sharing and Serendipity
The bridges we build make the
difference between ‘use’ and ‘re-use’
Ben O’Steen, British Library Labs @benosteen

4. British Library Labs
funded by the Andrew K. Mellon foundation
(2013 - …)
⇒ Mahendra Mahey and Ben O’Steen

5. Experimenting for the sake of the
researcher:
British Library Labs - http://labs.bl.uk
(embedded in the ‘Digital Scholarship’
department.)
“Create, explore and foster new and innovative
ways to work with the British Library’s existing
digital content.”*
(*My paraphrasing)

6. David Foster Wallace, on Ambition:
“You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The
perfectionism is very dangerous, because of course if your
fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do
anything.
Because doing anything results in— It’s actually kind of
tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and
perfect it is in your head for what it really is.”
- As told to Leonard Lopate on WNYC on March 4, 1996.
(emphasis my own)
http://blankonblank.org/interviews/david-foster-wallace-on-ambition/

8. The unifying theme to (pretty much)
all the requests*:
* before BL Labs

9. The unifying theme to (pretty much)
all the requests:
Give me
EVERYTHING!

10. Why?
“Can’t they just find the things they want
through the catalogue?”

11. 1. If they knew which bits
of data were necessary,
they would already know
the answers.

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

13. 2. If a conventional
search interface worked,
they wouldn’t be asking.

14. Library interfaces presuppose that the
person using them:
- knows the name of the thing they need,
- wants a single thing at a time,
- share the library’s views on characterising
information,
- and most importantly, the ‘person’ using
them is an actual person, not a machine

16. “16 Sad Women”

17. 2013 Competition winners
http://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs
Pieter Francois

18. Data-mining
Research using a normal catalogue interface is
like finding needles in a haystack.
Data-mining is like throwing a huge magnet in
and seeing what sticks.
Bulk access to all data is necessary for new
forms of research to emerge.

20. How has the depiction of
faces changed in books
over the 19th Century?
Or, how well does modern photographic
face detection routines work on 19th
Century illustrations?

22. Success? Not really.
Many more female faces were found than
male.
This did not mean that there are more
images of women in the books than men!

23. 19C depictions of faces
• Often drawn more symmetrically - male faces
were more likely to be exaggerated.
• Depiction is typically 'clean' and posed
• Fashion: beards, spectacles and hats - different
to the modern photographic training data

24. There was something else though...
People on their way past would occasionally
pause and look over my shoulder.
Every day it dug up illustrations that
surprised me and the team around me.
So… I wondered if anyone else might be
surprised and intrigued by them too?
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/archive

28. Impact?
Hard to measure but:
- 20 million hits on average every month,
over 230 million in 13 months.
- Over 150,000 tags added.
- Hundreds of contributors.
- Iterative crowdsourcing is ongoing.
- https://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/Commons:
British_Library/Mechanical_Curator_collection/
map_tag_status

31. http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/sound-and-vision/2014/10/inspired-by-
flickr-air.html

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

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

36. Burning Man Festival

40. Gothic theme, tie-in with the Library's exhibition
Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination
3 October 2014 - 20 January 2015
• Fonthill Abbey
Home of William Beckford, author of Vathek
• Edgar Allan Poe’s
Masque of the Red Death
• Whitby and its association with Bram Stoker’s
novel Dracula
Off the Map 2014

41. Off the Map
2014 Winners
•2014 winning team:
Gothulus Rift
University of South
Wales
•Created a Fonthill Abbey
inspired game called Nix
using Oculus Rift
•Blog: http:
//nixgamedevblog.
blogspot.co.uk
•YouTube flythrough:
http://youtu.
be/8ESieZO4VHw

42. 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/

43. British Library Labs Competitions
http://labs.bl.
uk/British+Library+Labs+Competition+2015
(Unofficial descriptions of the two:
“Tell us your ideas”
and
“Show us what you have done”)

45. My contact details:
ben.osteen@bl.uk
@benosteen
Links:
http://labs.bl.uk
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com
https://flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary
https://github.com/bl-labs
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-first-steps.html