digital research at the british library: libraries full of data and mainstreaming experimentation
TRANSCRIPT
Digital Research at
the British Library Libraries full of data and
mainstreaming experimentation
Dr James Baker
Curator, Digital Research
@j_w_baker
www.bl.uk 2
www.bl.uk 4
Newspaper Man photograph courtesy of
Flickr user Ed Stevenson / Creative
Commons Licensed
www.bl.uk 5
“Literary scholars and historians have in the past been limited in their
analyses of print culture by the constraints of physical archives and human
capacity. A lone scholar cannot read, much less make sense
of, millions of newspaper pages. With the aid of computational
linguistics tools and digitized corpora, however, we are working toward a
large-scale, systemic understanding of how texts were valued and
transmitted during this period”
David A. Smith, Ryan Cordell, and Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, ‘Infectious Texts:
Modeling Text Reuse in Nineteenth-Century Newspapers’ (2013)
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dasmith/infect-bighum-2013.pdf
www.bl.uk 6
discipline camp and
camps sentence
Ngram Viewer ©
www.bl.uk 7
Reading the Riots (LSE, Guardian)
– How misinformation spread on
Twitter during a time of crisis
– 2.6 million tweets analysed
– Volunteers used to help
categorise data
– Images compared
– Sentiment analysis deployed
Interdisciplinary, collaborative effort
– Proctor (Warwick), Vis
(Sheffield), Voss (St Andrews).
– Reading the riots on Twitter :
methodological innovation for the
analysis of big data (2013)
© Guardian
www.bl.uk 8
‘Early users of medieval books of
hours and prayer books left signs
of their reading in the form of
fingerprints in the margins. The
darkness of their
fingerprints correlates to
the intensity of their use
and handling. A densitometer
-- a machine that measures the
darkness of a reflecting surface --
can reveal which texts a reader
favored.’ Kathryn M. Rudy, ‘Dirty Books: Quantifying
Patterns of Use in Medieval Manuscripts
Using a Densitometer’, Journal of
Historians of Nederlandish Art (2010)
www.bl.uk 9
Virtual St Paul’s
Cross Project
Notes from talk at Institute of
Historical Research, 18 February
2014.
www.bl.uk 10
“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 (2014)
www.bl.uk 11
Digital Scholarship Training Programme – objectives
By staff for staff (with a role for external expertise)
Redefine the role of BL in taking an active approach to digital research
Increase awareness of the digital tools and methodologies researchers use
Increase ability to shape digital services
Increase confidence in establishing collaborations with external partners
for supporting digital research
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© UKWA/Conservative
Party
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© David
Normal
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github.com/BL-publicdomain/blpublicdomain
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github.com/BL-publicdomain/blpublicdomain
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github.com/BL-publicdomain/blpublicdomain
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github.com/BL-publicdomain/blpublicdomain
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github.com/BL-publicdomain/blpublicdomain
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picaguess.herokuapp.com dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15980
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picaguess.herokuapp.com dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15980
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picaguess.herokuapp.com dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15980
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picaguess.herokuapp.com dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15980
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Thank you! @j_w_baker
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/drjwbaker/