The document describes an experiment conducted by the British Library Labs to provide researchers with broader access to the Library's digital collections. Researchers were given direct access to files to explore how faces were depicted in 19th century illustrations. While face detection software had limited success due to differences from modern images, the experiment revealed unexpected illustrations. This led to the creation of the Mechanical Curator Twitter account and Flickr site to make more images accessible. The Library is now exploring providing broader access and ways to make data more useful through collaborations like the British Library Big Data Experiment.

2. Surprising? It was an experiment,
after all...

3. Ah, I’ve not said what ‘it’ is, have I?
Let’s start at the beginning...

4. [Insert clichéd time-travel effects here]

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

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

7. Digital Research Team
• The Digital Research Team is a
cross-disciplinary mix of curators,
librarians and programmers
supporting the innovative use of
our digital collections.
• We explore how digital technologies
are re/shaping research and how this
informs how the library does its
business.
• We encourage and support
colleagues & scholars of all
disciplines to work innovatively with
and across the library’s diverse
digital content

8. Engaging with researchers
Informally (typically through direct questions):
“Can I work with all of the scanned books that
might be about 19th century European travel?”
“I like ‘distant reading’. I don’t know what it is
exactly, but it sounds useful. Does the library
offer that?”

9. Engaging with researchers
Formally (through our yearly ‘competitions’)
Researchers submit a proposal, entries are
shortlisted and two ‘winners’ are picked.

10. They win our time and effort
(and travel expenses and, so I’ve been told,
some actual money at the end of it.)

12. 2013 Competition winners
http://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs
Pieter Francois

13. 2013 Competition winners
http://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs
Dan Norton - “Mixing the Library. Information
Interaction and the DJ”
Can a researcher record a session drawing
from digital objects, in the same way a DJ does
with music tracks?

14. The unifying theme to (pretty much)
all the requests:

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

16. Fetch!

17. The *other* unifying themes to the
requests:
“I need tools to help me interpret the vast
amount of content you hold. You don’t provide
any but make it impossible for others to do so.”
“I want to work on broad sweeps of content,
rather than book-by-book.”
“API? what’s that? I don’t care. Just give me
the files.”

18. So, a challenge was born…
If a researcher was given direct file access to a
large amount of data, can it be useful?
One way to try it out, was to ‘eat our own
dogfood’

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

21. Success? Not really.
• Likelyhood of detection:
• Female faces > Male

22. 19C depictions of faces
• Likelyhood of detection:
• Female faces > Male
• Any common differences?
• 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 training data

23. 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 wonder if anyone else might be
surprised and intrigued by them too?
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/archive

26. Accessible?
• In theory, the books were accessible.
• In practice, it was a real challenge to find
anything viewable.
The chasm between digital and print:
http://samplegenerator.cloudapp.net

27. 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?

31. Creative Uses
• David Normal installation at Burning Man Festival
• “Moments” by Joe Bell
• Colouring-in Pages for Children

34. Research and Technology
• Mario Klingemann Pattern Recognition Software
• Collaborative PhD ‘A History of the Printed Image 1750-1850: Applying
Data Science Techniques to Printed Book Illustration’
• TSB Digitial Innovation Contest New tech for tracking Public Domain in
the Wild

35. Crowdsourcing & Apps
• Metadata Games
• Wikipedia Synoptic Index

36. Tutorial
s
• Using Photoshop to Up-res images
• Converting images to vector graphics

37. Collaborations with Colleagues
• Inspired by Flickr, a Sound Archive series
• Maps will be fed into the next phase of the Georeferencer

38. Education
• Images included in Wikipedia Articles
• University of Minnesota English Literature Course Exercise on Tagging
• Art Therapy Courses

39. Impact:
Hard to measure!
Are image view stats really a good measure?
(163 million views as of 10/06/2014)
How about getting every image viewed once?
(done by 5/3/2014) at least 5 times? (only a
few hundred left 12/06/2014!)

40. What’s next?
Accessible is great, but can we make our data
more useful?
Not just images, but any of our researchable
digital content?

41. Microsoft Azure 4 Research award
This was awarded to British Library Labs at
the end of last year. Equivalent to $40,000 for
a years use!
This gave us capacity and storage for our
“unplanned” experiments.
Microsoft (and UCL) are joining in on a new
experiment...

42. The ‘British Library Big Data
Experiment’
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-
scholarship/2014/06/the-british-library-big-
data-experiment.html
“What can a group of UCL Big Data CS
students do when given access to cloud
computing, all of the book data and a focus
group of digital humanists?”

43. “Playing with assurance”
Using concepts from
party games like
“Wits and Wagers” to
validate and assure
incoming tags.

44. [Tangent warning]
Scott Nicholson’s RECIPE

45. In summary
• Mechanical Curator is still tweeting, and
Flickr is still standing.
• We are experimenting with broader and
more direct access to our digital holdings.
• There is a demand for this content!
• Take the content to where people go.
– NB ‘where’ is entirely dependant on the current
culture of search and research. Right now, it’s
Google.

46. Now for one, final experiment…

47. Thank you!
Questions?

48. Thank you for your time
(Autographs by reception, £10 each)

49. [drops microphone]
[audience goes wild]

50. [this slide intentionally left blank]

51. Maybe just ending it with
the useful details?

52. Contact:
ben.osteen@bl.uk
@benosteen
Links:
http://labs.bl.uk
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com
http://flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-first-steps.html

53. Image credits:
Title image: from https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11160768745
"Image taken from page 97 of 'The Mineral Baths of Bath. The Bathes of Bathe's Ayde in the reign of Charles 2nd as
illustrated by a drawing of the King's and Queen's Bath, signed 1675. Whereunto is annexed a Visit to Bath in the year
1675 by “A Person of Q" by The British Library (More from this book here:
https://www.flickr.com/search/?tags=sysnum000878624)
Slide 10 - Title: The costume of Yorkshire, Illustrator: "Walker, George; Havell, R & D (George Walker; R and D Havell)"
Provenance: London, 1814 Caption: Rape threshing https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/12459323374
Slide 11 - Image taken from page 3 of 'Worthy Workers. A monthly magazine for all, etc. [Edited and partly written by
Sarah Sutton.] no. 1. March 1886' https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11287891873
Slide 16 - Image taken from page 467 of '[The History of New South Wales, including Botany Bay, Port Jackson,
Pamaratta [sic], Sydney, and all its dependancies ... with the customs and manners of the natives, and an account of the
English colony, from its foundation https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11001417405
Slide 20 - Image from http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/10/peeking-behind-the-curtain-of-the-
mechanical-curator.html