1http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

http://www.bl.uk/projects/british-library-labs

18th March 2016 – BL Labs Roadshow 2016Presentation at Sheffield Hallam University

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

2http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

http://www.bl.uk/projects/british-library-labsFunded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

18th March 2016 – BL Labs Roadshow 2016Presentation at Sheffield Hallam University

3http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Distant Reading – Adam Crymble

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4y-_VoXdA

4http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Digital research methods

http://labs.bl.uk/Launch+Event (has some examples from researchers)

Corpus analysis toolsText Mining

Visualisations

Location based searching

Geotagging

Annotation

Natural Language Processing

Using Application Programming Interfaces for datasets e.g. Metadata, Images

Transcribing

Crowdsourcing / Human Computation

5http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

One of Largest Library’s in the World180 million* items

1-2 %* digitised

* estimate

6http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Managing expectations:Looking for very specific things digitally

•Only a small amount of content is digitised!

•Might not be the treasure you expect at the end of a digital journey!

•Starts with a conversation!•Research interests?

•What digital collections are you interested in?

7http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

You might get lucky!Fly fishing by JR Hartley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2TilNclT8k

8http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

IntersectionYou and the Library

Your research interestsDigital

collections interested in

British LibraryDigital

collections we have

This is where Labs works

9http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship

http://labs.bl.uk/Digital+Collections

Soon…http://data.bl.uk

Mini Network Area Storage Device (NAS) guide:http://goo.gl/E8aRyQ

In 20 years time…

10http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

How?

11http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

•Submit ideas by 11 April 2016.

•Two finalists announced late May 2016.

•Residency June – October 2016.•Up to £3600 support, technical, curatorial etc.

•Showcase @ Symposium Monday 7 Nov 16.

•Winner £3000 & Runner up £1000!

Competition

12http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

•Projects already using BL digital content in interesting and innovative ways.

•Submit projects (previous and new) by 5 September 2016.

•Artistic, Commercial, Research and Learning / Teaching categories.

•Winners announced @Symposium 7 Nov 16.

•£500 Winner & £100 Runner Up.

Awards

13http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Projects & Ideas• Ideas change once you try to access, examine and use the data!

•Talk to us about working on potential ideas / projects.

14http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

2013Pieter Francois

Dan Norton

2014Desmond Schmidt

Bob Nicholson

2015Katrina Navickas

Adam CrymbleDina MalkovaMario KlingemannSpatial Humanities Project at

Lancaster University

James Heald

Who and Why?

Please refer to the Winners’ Hand out

15http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Competition

16http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Victorian Meme Machine (2014)Competition Winner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK95lzaPNp0Bob Nicholson

http://victorianhumour.tumblr.com/

17http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

18http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Rob WalkerVictorian Mother-in-law Jokes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GRgj7Q5OM0

19http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Katrina Navickas (2015) Political Meetings Mapper

http://politicalmeetingsmapper.co.ukLabs Symposium 2015 (33 mins)

https://goo.gl/Qq78Oa

Interview 2015 (4 mins)https://goo.gl/BSA3be

The Chartist Newspaperhttp://goo.gl/vOLSnH

Chartist Monster Meeting

See after lunch…

20http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Adam Crymble (2015)Crowdsource Arcade

What if crowd sourcing

looked like this?

http://goo.gl/LBfJ4W

Game Jam - http://goo.gl/OH9pOZ30 mins talkLabs Symposium (2015)https://goo.gl/7z0j8p

5 min interview (2015)https://goo.gl/SSRsdd

http://goo.gl/0APpE8

21http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Art Treachery – Januz Druz Tag Attack – Antonio Padial

Art Treachery and Tag Attack

22http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Awards

23http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Curious Images Event 2014https://goo.gl/ubL0AO

Labs Symposium 2015https://goo.gl/gRZ5Ia

44 Men who Look 44(Notice the direction faces)

Tragic Looking Women

Collage Art

Artistic (2015)Mario Klingeman - Quasimondo

Read more: http://goo.gl/dM8ieAA Hat on the GroundSpells trouble

24http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Commercial (2015)Etsy project by Dina Malkova

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DinaMalkova

Labs Symposium 2015https://goo.gl/OfJujM

Read more: http://goo.gl/pbxZUv

25http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/spatialhum.wordpress/

Labs Symposium 2015: https://goo.gl/ZCU56a

Research (2015)Spatial Humanities: Lancaster University

Combining Text and Geographic Informationhttp://goo.gl/yZ3xCJ

Investigating geographical representation of disease in digitised 19th Century newspapers

26http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Special Jury’s Prize (2015)James Heald – Wikimedia and Map work

https://goo.gl/WYZCB2

http://goo.gl/HNQq5e

https://goo.gl/VPgffL

https://commons.wikimedia.org/

Labs Symposium (2015)https://goo.gl/djtm1b

27http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Commercial (2015) Runner UpSarah Wingate-Gray and Kate Lomax

http://goo.gl/s1dVSC

28http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Creative with Wildlife Sounds

http://goo.gl/s7siv0

Sound Edit Wildlife Films Competition 2013 http://vimeo.com/60401313

'Dave's Wild Life' by Samuel de Ceccatty, won first prize!

http://sounds.bl.uk/Environment

29http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Dave’s Wildlife

30http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

What can 65,000books tell us?

Image: Artwork by Alicia Martin

Just one digital collection

31http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Snipping out imagesfrom 65,000 Digitised Books

Face recognition

Mechanical Curator

Flickr

Worked better for female faces than men’s

Press

http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com>400,000,000 views

> 500,000 tags

http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/

1,020,418 imagesneed tagging!

Creative uses of imageshttp://goo.gl/qPPgxX

32http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Tagging a million imagesIterative Crowdsourcing

http://goo.gl/j6fxac

Cardiff University’sLost Visions Project

http://www.metadatagames.org/

James Heald

Mario Klingemann

Chico 45

Use computational methods

Human Tagger

Top British Library Flickr Commons Taggers

33http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Interview David Normal

https://youtu.be/Q3SBxO34Zlc

‘It was beyond my wildest dreams’

34http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Finding one image on Flickr

Finding many more!Make collagesMake 4 paintingsExhibit light boxes at Burning Man 2014

In Nevada USA

Work with Labs & British Library to installLight boxes in London

In 2015

35http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

36http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Let’s have a party!

Music mix by DJ Yoda using British Library Sounds

Exhibited from June to Nov 2015

20th June 2015

https://soundcloud.com/bbc6music/dj-yodas-library-jamInstallation in Poet’s Circle in Piazza outside at BL in St Pancras London

Images from Burning Man and Flickr brought into the Poet’s Circle

37http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

- https://goo.gl/QilqqT By Kestrel Moon

Animating static images

38http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

- https://goo.gl/QilqqT By Kestrel Moon

Animating static images

39http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Challenges

40http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Language Problems

•Access

•Collections

•Content

•Crowdsourcing

41http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Data Problems [stuff goes in here]

•Metadata isn’t as clean as many

•Square brackets to indicate inferred information

•Code to plot when a record had square brackets by Ben O’Steen

42http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

43http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Optical Character Recognition

44http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Simple Data Structures

•Everything has a URL

•URL links to page which tells you about the thing

•Link to other things

•URL readable by machine not just a human

•Not there yet!

45http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Training / Teaming up with Expert?• Many researchers have the domain knowledge but lack the technical skills to use Digital Research Methods

• Should our support be more focused on training?

• There are plenty of computational experts looking for problems to solve

• Should they be teamed up with those that have problems that need solving

46http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

only in Reading

Rooms due to ©

only on site due to

©

not online – various storage devices

online and open

British Library

online behind paywall

Challenges of Digital access

Labs Residency Modelhttps://goo.gl/tvNVRB

http://goo.gl/ii0XHG

47http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Finding Open Digital Collections• Copyright cleared for research use

• Curated (Is there someone who knows the ‘story’ about the collection?)

• Collection / Item Level Metadata available? (What state is and does it need cleaning?)

• Where is it?Image from : https://goo.gl/Qjeqo1

48http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Ideas change once you try to examine, access and use

the data!

49http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Why is the Library doing this?

50http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

SupportingDigital Experiments better

BL Labs Git Hub Site Re-OCRing Newspapers Flickr API

BL Explore – Search Catalogue Python Code

51http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Lessons…•Huge appetite to use BL digital content & data (e.g. Flickr Commons stats).

•Identifying / bridging gaps for researchers to use BL data.

•Labs can help researchers navigate through the Library to get the data they want.

52http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Perfection vs Imperfection

•If we focus too much on perfection we will never get anything done!

•Fear of failure seen as a negative thing.

•Just don’t be scared to try experiments!

53http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

Fail fasterSmall experiments!

https://goo.gl/Vlv3Yu Let yourself reboot!

54http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Finally…

•Try and examine, use our data and talk to us about your ideas and projects!

•Consider entering the Competition and Awards!

•You never know you might….

55http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Change the world with …British Library digital content

56http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Accessing the Mini NASMini Network Area Storage Device (NAS) guide:

http://goo.gl/E8aRyQ

Find the ‘opendata’ wireless access point and join it. The passphrase is ‘opendata’Accessing data foldersUsername:guestPassword:guest

Or use ftp://10.0.0.1/

57http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

58http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

What’s on the Mini NAS?• British National Bibliography – 3.5 million records (2

Gb)

• 90,000 Playbills – 1602 – 1902 (60 Gb)

• ALTO XML (includes METS and MODS) for OCR of 65,000 volumes, 22 million pages mostly from the 19th Century (909 Gb)

• 1 million images snipped from books put on Flickr (667 Gb)

• 70,000 tagged images (170 Gb)

59http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

It’s messy but fascinating!

60http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Ideas Lab

•Get into groups of 2-6

•Read the instructions in the Ideas Lab Pack

•We are around to help and advise.

•Enjoy it and have fun!

61http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Pitching your ideas

•Pitch for 2 minutes

•Feedback

62http://labs.bl.uk @BL_Labs @sheffhallamuni #bldigital labs@bl.uk

Goody bag!