stella wisdom's slides for a talk to ucl basc students on 02/03/2015
TRANSCRIPT
Digital Research at
the British Library
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
www.bl.uk 4
Engaging with Labs
• Competitions
Labs Competition Deadline Thursday 30th of April 2015.
Winners will be chosen by Friday 29th of May 2015
http://labs.bl.uk/British+Library+Labs+Competition+2015
Labs Awards Deadline Monday 14th of September 2015
http://labs.bl.uk/British+Library+Labs+Awards+2015
• Events – Hack/ Data Days, Ideas Labs,Tag-a-thons
• Project proposals
www.bl.uk 5
Story of one digital collection…
What can 68,000books tell us?
Image: Artwork by Alicia Martin
www.bl.uk 6
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
www.bl.uk 7
Extracting Images from OCR
7
<?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 8
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/ https://twitter.com/MechCuratorBot
www.bl.uk 9
Flickr albums created through crowd-sourced tagging
www.bl.uk 10
British Library one million images on
Flickr - coverage in the media!
www.bl.uk 11
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
www.bl.uk 12
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
www.bl.uk 13
Soundscapes inspired by the Flickr
collection
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/sound-and-vision/2014/10/inspired-by-flickr-air.html
www.bl.uk 14
www.bl.uk 16
www.bl.uk 17
www.bl.uk 18
Burning Man Festival
www.bl.uk 19
Burning Man Festival
David Normal created light boxes around the
Burning man, using the British Library’s Flickr Images
www.bl.uk 21
Victorian Meme Machine
Dr Bob Nicholson (Edge Hill University)
http://www.digitalvictorianist.com/
http://youtu.be/Q8LkH0I8mEg
www.bl.uk 22
Mechanical Comedian
http://victorianhumour.tumblr.com/
www.bl.uk 24
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 25
C.J. Visscher, London , 1616 (detail) Maps C.5.a.6
www.bl.uk 26
John Leake, An exact surveigh of the streets lanes and churches contained within the
ruines of the City of London, 1667. Maps Crace port 2.58
www.bl.uk 27
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 28
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 29
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 30
http://youtu.be/NzzQLaltmVA
Off the Map videoclips of 2013 & 2014 winning entries
www.bl.uk 31
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/
www.bl.uk 32
@miss_wisdom
British Library Labs
http://labs.bl.uk
Digital Scholarship Blog
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
@bl_labs