Sharing and Serendipity

45
Sharing and Serendipity The bridges we build make the difference between ‘use’ and ‘re-use’ Ben O’Steen, British Library Labs @benosteen

Transcript of Sharing and Serendipity

Page 1: Sharing and Serendipity

Sharing and SerendipityThe bridges we build make the

difference between ‘use’ and ‘re-use’

Ben O’Steen, British Library Labs @benosteen

Page 2: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 3: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 4: Sharing and Serendipity

British Library Labs

funded by the Andrew K. Mellon foundation (2013 - …)

⇒ Mahendra Mahey and Ben O’Steen

Page 5: Sharing and Serendipity

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)

Page 6: Sharing and Serendipity

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/

Page 7: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 8: Sharing and Serendipity

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

* before BL Labs

Page 9: Sharing and Serendipity

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

Give me EVERYTHING!

Page 10: Sharing and Serendipity

Why?“Can’t they just find the things they want

through the catalogue?”

Page 11: Sharing and Serendipity

1. If they knew which bits of data were necessary,

they would already know the answers.

Page 12: Sharing and Serendipity

“I am interested in

travel accounts in

Europe during the 19th Century”

Page 13: Sharing and Serendipity

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

Page 14: Sharing and Serendipity

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

Page 15: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 17: Sharing and Serendipity

2013 Competition winnershttp://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs

Pieter Francois

Page 18: Sharing and Serendipity

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.

Page 19: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 20: Sharing and Serendipity

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?

Page 21: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 22: Sharing and Serendipity

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!

Page 23: Sharing and Serendipity

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

Page 24: Sharing and Serendipity

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

Page 25: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 29: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 30: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 31: Sharing and Serendipity

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

Page 32: Sharing and Serendipity

David Normalhttp://www.davidnormal.com/

Page 33: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 34: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 35: Sharing and Serendipity

Burning Man Festival

David Normal created light boxes around theBurning man, using the British Library’s Flickr Images

Page 36: Sharing and Serendipity

Burning Man Festival

Page 37: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 39: Sharing and Serendipity
Page 40: Sharing and Serendipity

Gothic theme, tie-in with the Library's exhibitionTerror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination 3 October 2014 - 20 January 2015

• Fonthill AbbeyHome 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

Page 41: Sharing and Serendipity

Off the Map 2014 Winners

•2014 winning team: Gothulus RiftUniversity 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

Page 42: Sharing and Serendipity

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/

Page 43: Sharing and Serendipity

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”)