The document discusses the British Library's efforts to promote games, interactive fiction, and digital scholarship. It describes competitions like Off the Map that challenge students to create games using the Library's digital collections. It also outlines events like the Interactive Fiction Summer School and International Games Week that bring together gaming and cultural heritage communities. The overall aim is to explore how games and technology can engage new audiences and transform research.

1. Playing and Making
in Libraries
Continue >> Videogames and Culture
3rd July 2018
Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator
@miss_wisdom
Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/

2. www.bl.uk 2
Founded in 2010, the Digital
Scholarship Department at British
Library supports researchers and
staff to make innovative use of our
digital collections and data.
We are a group of cross disciplinary
experts in the areas of digitisation,
librarianship, digital history &
humanities, computer and data
science, looking at how technology is
transforming research, and in turn,
our services.
@BL_DigiSchol

3. • Off the Map Competition
• Read Watch Play Online Jams
– Odyssey Jam 2017
– Gothic Novel Jam 2018
• Rob Sherman’s transmedia residency
• Interactive Fiction Summer School
• International Games Week
– AdventureX
• Games & GLAMs
• Then I’ll hand over for talks on:
– Playing Beowulf
– Lakescraft and Litcraft
What I’ll talk about today:

4. www.bl.uk 4

5. www.bl.uk 5

6. www.bl.uk 6
The Off the Map Competition
• A new type of collaboration
• Explores how British Library digital collections
can be used in creative ways
• Engagement with new audiences
• Opportunity for students in the UK to
showcase their talents to industry

7. www.bl.uk 7
C.J. Visscher, London , 1616 (detail) Maps C.5.a.6

8. www.bl.uk 8
John Leake, An exact surveigh of the streets lanes and churches contained within the
ruines of the City of London, 1667. Maps Crace port 2.58

9. www.bl.uk 9
2013 winning team:
Pudding Lane Productions from De Montfort University, Leicester
Created an interpretation of 17th Century London
http://youtu.be/SPY-hr-8-M0 (Flythrough starts at 0:50)

10. www.bl.uk 10
Image from Delineations of Fonthill and its Abbey, John Rutter, 1823

11. www.bl.uk 11
Image from Delineations of
Fonthill and its Abbey,
John Rutter, 1823

12. www.bl.uk 12
2014 winning team: Gothulus Rift, University of South Wales
Created a Fonthill Abbey inspired game called Nix using Oculus Rift
YouTube flythrough: http://youtu.be/8ESieZO4VHw

13. www.bl.uk 13

14. www.bl.uk 14
The original handwritten manuscript of the
story, ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground’,
which was first told to Alice Liddell by Lewis
Carroll in 1862.

15. www.bl.uk 15
2015 Winning Game:
“The Wondering Lands of Alice”
Team Off our Rockers, De Montfort University in Leicester
YouTube flythrough: https://youtu.be/7bwx4uUnbV4

16. www.bl.uk 16
The Tempest
Shakespeare was inspired to write The Tempest when he read of the fate of the
Sea-Adventure, a ship taking English colonists to North America which was
wrecked off the coast of Bermuda in 1609. The Bermudas were then the most
feared place on earth for sea travellers, who had heard stories about the islands
being inhabited by devils.
Map of Bermuda
as published in
Gerhard Mercator
and Jodocus
Hondius' world
atlas of 1633.
Maps K.Top 123

17. www.bl.uk 17
Off the Map 2016 1st Place:
“The Tempest” by Team Quattro, De Montfort University, Leicester
YouTube flythrough: https://youtu.be/0lzpEFgpk3Y

18. www.bl.uk 18
Off the Map 2016 2nd Place:
‘Midsummer’ by Tom Battey, London College of Communication
Blog: http://tombattey.com/design/developing-interactive-dialogue-in-
midsummer/
YouTube flythrough: https://youtu.be/sz-IKvp62NI
Download the game:
http://tombattey.com/portfolio-items/midsummer/

19. www.bl.uk 19
Next three projects I’m about to discuss use Public Domain
images from the Microsoft Partnership Digitisation Project
2006-8
• 68,000 volumes (47,000+ titles) published in the 19th
century mostly in English
• Excluded authors active 1850-1901 and who died after
1936
• Output: 25 million pages

20. www.bl.uk 20
The illustrations were extracted algorithmically from the
digitised books:
20
<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <mets:mets
xmlns:xsi="http://ww
w.w3.org/2001/XML
Schema-instance"
xmlns:mets="http://w
ww.loc.gov/METS/"
xsi:schemaLocation=
"http://www.loc.gov/
METS/
http://www.loc.gov/
standards/mets/ver
sion18/mets.xsd
info:lc/xmlns/premi
s-v2
Image snipped out
Algorithmically
From ALTO XML
Image taken from page 207 of 'London and its Environs. A
picturesque survey of the metropolis and the suburbs ...
Translated by Henry Frith. With ... illustrations'
ALTO XML

21. www.bl.uk 21
The illustrations were uploaded to Flickr and albums were
created through crowd-sourced tagging

22. Odyssey Jam 2017
https://itch.io/jam/odysseyjam
Writing challenge tied in with Read Watch Play, a partnership of libraries
worldwide encouraging themed discussions of books, films, music and games,
each month they have a theme and for March 2017 it was #waterread.

23. Odyssey Jam 2017 entries
https://itch.io/jam/odysseyjam/entries
We encouraged entrants to make use of the digitised images on Flickr that The
British Library had released under a creative commons license.
Some games used these images, e.g. No One and 108 suitors.

24. 200th anniversary of the
publication of Frankenstein. A
perfect opportunity to run a gothic
novel themed challenge.
Sub-theme is: The monster within
Gothic Novel Jam with Read Watch
Play; participants to make
something creative inspired by the
gothic novel genre. By the 31st July
upload or share it on the itch.io
Gothic Novel Jam site.
Entries can include stories, poetry,
art, games, music, films, pictures,
soundscapes, or any other type of
digital media response.
We want participants to use
images from the British Library
Flickr account as inspiration

25. www.bl.uk 25
Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
Interactive Writer-in-Residence 2014/15

26. www.bl.uk 26
Lines in the Ice - Seeking the Northwest Passage
British Library Free Exhibition
November 2014 to April 2015

27. www.bl.uk 27
Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
Sir John Franklin Lady Franklin

28. www.bl.uk 28
Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were lost on the ill-fated Franklin expedition in
search of the Northwest Passage in 1845

29. www.bl.uk 29
Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
Isaak Scinbank, the ‘Arctic Angler’ of Milldale
http://onmywifesback.tumblr.com/post/100107314408/scinbank

30. www.bl.uk 30
Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/collectioncare/2014/11/the-salmon-
book-conservation-in-reverse-.html

31. www.bl.uk 31
Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
The Digital Cairn

32. www.bl.uk 32
Rob Sherman – On My Wife’s Back
Events & Music
https://soundcloud.com/the-british-library/sets/songs-from-on-my-wifes-back

33. The Infinite Library
InteractiveFictionSummer School
17– 21July2017
www.bl.uk/courses
http://blogs.bl.uk/english-and-drama/2017/07/first-steps-into-interactive-fiction-.html

34. www.bl.uk 34
Infinite Journeys
Interactive Fiction Summer School
23 – 27 July 2018
https://www.bl.uk/events/infinite-journeys-interactive-fiction-summer-school

35. www.bl.uk 35
4-10 November 2018
http://games.ala.org/international-games-week
http://games.ala.org/gaming-at-the-british-library

36. www.bl.uk 36
For 2018 International Games Week the British Library is hosting
The Narrative Games Convention: AdventureX
10-11 November 2018
http://adventurexpo.org/
https://youtu.be/PyJl5stFteI

37. www.bl.uk 37

38. www.bl.uk 38
A forum for those who are interested in games, cultural heritage
and GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives, museums)
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-GB#!forum/games-and-glams
https://twitter.com/games_glams

39. www.bl.uk 39
Web: http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship
Blog:
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
Email: stella.wisdom@bl.uk
Twitter: @miss_wisdom #bldigital