BL Labs at Arts and Humanities event
14
British Library Labs http://labs.bl.uk Wednesday 23 rd October 2013, 1800 Art and Humanities Event British Library London Mr Mahendra Mahey British Library Labs Project Manager Scholarship and Collections, Digital Scholarship
Transcript of BL Labs at Arts and Humanities event
British Library Labshttp://labs.bl.uk
Wednesday 23rd October 2013, 1800 Art and Humanities EventBritish LibraryLondon
Mr Mahendra MaheyBritish Library Labs Project ManagerScholarship and Collections, Digital Scholarship
http://labs.bl.uk 2#bl_labs
Encouraging scholars and developers to do research and development with and across British Library digital collections and data
British Library Labs is about…
http://labs.bl.uk 3#bl_labs
What activities does Labs do?• Encourage researchers / developers to do interesting things with BL
digital content (+other) with and across collections (a data driven approach)
• Competitions, events (hack events)
• Creating an environment where scholars / developers can work intensively with Library’s digital collections (winners will be resident)
• Work with your ideas
• Help develop tools and services to support digital scholarship
• Case studies for library and research communities
http://labs.bl.uk 4#bl_labs
How Labs works…
BL LabsCompetition
Events
Contact
Software
Publications
Tools and services to
support Digital Scholarship
BL Digital Collection /
Data
idea
BL Digital Collection /
Data
Other Digital Collection
idea
idea
idea
idea
http://labs.bl.uk 5#bl_labs
British Library Digital Collections
• Filter used is…
• Copyright cleared for research and non-commercial use
• Curated
• Collection Level Metadata available
• Where is it
Available only in
Reading Rooms
Available on site
Digital but not online – various storage
devices
Available only onsite at the momentHack Events, In residence
Digital and online
http://labs.bl.uk 6#bl_labs
Some data / digital collections
British National BibliographyUK Web Archive Data 19th Century Books
Environmental SoundsText-mining of electronic journals
Book ordering and anonymised reader
data
Resonance FM10 year CommunityArts Radio Show
Datasets, Books / Text, Images / Music, Maps, Sounds, Multimedia
http://labs.bl.uk/Digital+Collections
http://labs.bl.uk 7#bl_labs
Example Research Methods• Corpus Analysis tools
• Visualisations
• Topic Models
• Location based searching
• Geotagging
• Annotation
• APIs for datasets e.g. Metadata, Images
• Crowdsourcing / Human Computation
• Natural Language Processing
• Transcribing
http://labs.bl.uk 8#bl_labs
Ideas from first competition
• Text mining in the reading rooms
• Curatorial
• Visualising large collections of sound at a glance (thumbnails)
• Using sheet music
• Working with a radio archive
• The winners are…
http://labs.bl.uk 9#bl_labs
Mixing the Library: The Disc Jockey & the Digital Collection
Dan Norton completed a PhD at the University of Dundee and is an Artist in Residence at Hangar, Centre for Art and Research, Barcelona.
His idea is to build a ‘mixing’ interface for interacting with BL digital collections and wider developed from the DJ's model of interaction with information.
Dan Norton’s prototype ‘mixing’ interface
Annotation
Preview ‘item’
Selected ‘right’ channel ‘item’
Selected ‘left’channel ‘item’
Collection ‘stalks’ made of ‘items’. Each ‘item’ is a URL. The order of the ‘items’ can be ‘shuffled’ and sent to the ‘left’ or ‘right’ channels
‘Play back’ of ‘items’ (Blue) and annotations (Yellow)
http://labs.bl.uk 10#bl_labs
In this example, the ‘Sample Generator’ searches across 1.8 million bibliographic records from the 19th Century for items about ‘Travel Routes’ and where possible
(digitised items permitting) provides unbiased digital ‘samples’ for further research.
Generates a randomised unbiased sample
Work 1
Generated sample URL (unique & citable after creation)
Work 1
Work 2
Work 3
Work 4
Work 5
Work 6
Work 7
Work 8
Terms used: ‘Travel Routes’ from ‘1888-1899’, sample size ‘8’. Set created on ‘16/10/2013’ by ‘Pieter Francois’
Travel Routes From To1888 1899
Digitally available content only
Account, Tour, Adventure, Visit. Journey, Expedition, Excursion, Trip, Holiday, Guide, Plan, Route
Sample Size 8 Generate
British Library Labs Sample Generator1
Travel route extracted from ‘Work 1’ for further research
3
Pieter Francois is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford. The ‘Sample Generator’ connects one or more major catalogues or collections of digitized texts through metadata.
The Sample Generator for Digitised Texts
Search terms
Distribution of items in catalogue
Researcher carries out research on works in the sample generated. Here it used for the basis
of generating travel routes as shown in 3.
2
Synonyms
http://labs.bl.uk 11#bl_labs
The Mechanical Curator!
• Just launched, lot’s of interest!!
• Randomly selected small illustrations and ornamentations, posted on the hour, over 420,000 images
• Rediscovered artwork from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th Century books.
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/http://www.flickr.com/photos/mechanicalcuratorcuttingshttp://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/post/64017485379/image-from-a-manual-of-elementary-geology
http://labs.bl.uk 12#bl_labs
Workshops – Ideas Labs
• Like Top Trumps• Datasets• Ideas• Outputs
Let us come to you!
http://labs.bl.uk 13#bl_labs
Engaging with Labs…
• AHRC Big Data Call, a number of requests to use BL Collections / Data
• Next competition and showcase 11 November 2013
• Ideas labs, workshops and hack events at your place!
• Hack Events – 12 December 2013– 13 January 2014– 12 February 2014– 10 March 2014
http://labs.bl.uk 14#bl_labs
Speak to me: 0207 412 7324 Email me: [email protected] or [email protected] Website: http://labs.bl.uk/ Twitter: @BL_LabsHash Tag: #bl_labsJiscmail: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=BL-LABS
Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
What next?
