Digital Research at

the British LibraryWhy we are here, what we

have, what we can do for you

Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator

@miss_wisdom

Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/

www.bl.uk 2

Digital Scholarship at British Library

“The production, use and

integration of digital content,

services and tools to facilitate

scholarship and research. It

allows research areas to be

investigated in new ways,

using new tools, leading to

new discoveries and analysis

to generate new

understanding”

-Adam Farquhar

Head of Digital Scholarship

Created in 2010, the department

works to enable….

• production of digital content

• sharing and integration of

digital content

• wider collaboration and

contribution around digital content

• complex analysis & facilitation of

new discoveries

www.bl.uk 3

More than resource discovery…

• Libraries and archives have spent the

last two decades making digital assets

and harvesting born-digital objects.

• We can now do much more than use

technology to discover these digital

objects and embrace the opportunities

afforded by an intellectual turn toward

digitally-driven research

• So digital research is about:

– New tools

– New discoveries

– New understanding

“The emergence of the new

digital humanities isn’t an

isolated academic

phenomenon. The

institutional and disciplinary

changes are part of a larger

cultural shift, inside and

outside the academy, a

rapid cycle of emergence

and convergence in

technology and culture”

Steven E Jones, Emergence of

the Digital Humanities (2013)

www.bl.uk 4

http://labs.bl.uk 5#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Engaging with Labs

•Competitions

•Events – Hack/ Data Days, Ideas

Labs,Tag-a-thons

•Project proposals

http://labs.bl.uk 6#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Story of one digital collection…

What can 68,000books tell us?

Image: Artwork by Alicia Martin

http://labs.bl.uk 7#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Microsoft Partnership Digitisation

2006-8

• 68,000 volumes (47,000+ titles) published in the 19th

century mostly in English

• Bulk selection by storage location and subject classification

(English literature, geography, history and philosophy)

• Excluded authors active 1850-1901 and who died after

1936

• Output: 25 million pages (colour JPEG

2000, ALTO text files, metadata)

• Digitised content is public domain

http://labs.bl.uk 8#bl_labs

Extracting Images from OCR

8

<?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

www.bl.uk 9

http://labs.bl.uk 10#bl_labs

Flickr albums created through crowd-sourced tagging

http://labs.bl.uk 11#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

British Library one million images on

Flickr - coverage in the media!

http://labs.bl.uk 12#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Flickr in numbers

Over 200,000,000 !!!image views since launch December 13th 2013

Almost all images seen at least 10 times

>116712 tags added

18,567 images favourited

http://labs.bl.uk 13#bl_labs

Free colouring in sheets for children http://www.playingbythebook.net/2014/03/18/barbapapas-new-house-a-book-

so-good-im-featuring-it-for-a-second-time/

Strassburg und seine

Bauten. Herausgegeben

vom Architekten- und

Ingenieur-Verein fur

Elsass-Lothringen. Mit 655

Abbildungen in Text, etc,

1894

http://labs.bl.uk 14#bl_labs

Soundscapes inspired by the Flickr

collection

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

flickr-air.html

http://labs.bl.uk 15#bl_labs

http://labs.bl.uk 16#bl_labs

David Normal

http://www.davidnormal.com/

http://labs.bl.uk 17#bl_labs

http://labs.bl.uk 18#bl_labs

www.bl.uk 19

Burning Man Festival

http://labs.bl.uk 20#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Burning Man Festival

David Normal created light boxes around the

Burning man, using the British Library’s Flickr Images

http://labs.bl.uk 21#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

David Normal

www.bl.uk 22

Victorian Meme Machine

Dr Bob Nicholson (Edge Hill University)

http://www.digitalvictorianist.com/

www.bl.uk 23

Mechanical Comedian

http://victorianhumour.tumblr.com/

www.bl.uk 24

http://britishlibrarylabs2015.thatcamp.org/

www.bl.uk 25

Off the Map videogame competition for 2013

Three sub themes:

• Stonehenge, including a proposed plan to rebuild

Stonehenge

• Pyramids at Giza

• 17th Century London, including a survey map made

months after the Great Fire of 1666

www.bl.uk 26

2013 winning team: Pudding Lane Productions from De Montfort

University, Leicester who created an interpretation of 17th Century London

http://puddinglanedmuga.blogspot.co.uk/

http://youtu.be/SPY-hr-8-M0 (Flythrough starts at 0:50)

www.bl.uk 27

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

www.bl.uk 28

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

www.bl.uk 29

http://youtu.be/NzzQLaltmVA

Off the Map

www.bl.uk 30

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/

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Two upcoming events for participating teams and individuals taking part in the

Alice's Adventures Off the Map competition

A perfect opportunity to find out more about the competition and to ask British

Library Curators about this year's sub-themes

(Oxford, Underground and Gardens) and the selected collection items

Both events are identical, so only sign up for one!

16 February: https://aliceoffthemapsessionone.eventbrite.co.uk

6 March: https://aliceoffthemapsessiontwo.eventbrite.co.uk

www.bl.uk 32

@miss_wisdom

British Library Labs

http://labs.bl.uk

digitalresearch@bl.uk

Digital Scholarship Blog

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/

@bl_labs