Working with the British Library’s Digital Content and Data:Opportunities for History Film Makers

Research and Development Exclusives: HistorySunny Side of the Doc, La Rochelle, France, History Day, Thursday 25th June 2015, 1430 - 1500

Adam GeeCommissioning EditorChannel 4

Mahendra MaheyManager of British Library Labs

http://labs.bl.uk 2#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Gee#

Adam GeeCommissioning Editor

http://labs.bl.uk 3#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

http://labs.bl.uk 4#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

St Pancras, London

Inside St PancrasStorage and

Document Supply at Boston Spa

One British Library, three sites

Stockton

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

Roly KeatingChief Executive

3 Years. Previouslyformer controller of BBC2, BBC 4 andBBC IPlayerhttp://goo.gl/g62hwr

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

Living Knowledge Vision2015 - 2023

https://goo.gl/Py9uHKRoly Keating’s speech and

Q&A on the role of libraries in a digital age

http://goo.gl/h41wW7Vision document

(launched Jan 2015)

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

In Summary…

To make our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone,

for research, inspiration and enjoyment and be the most open, creative and innovative institution of its kind

by 2023.

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

Contributing to the vision

Custodianship Research Business

Culture Learning International

http://labs.bl.uk 9#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

180 Million Items

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

14 million books60 million patents8 million stamps6 million maps3 million sound recordings1.6 million musical scores0.3 million manuscripts0.8 million serial titles

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

Digitisation at the British Library

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

Growth of the digital library

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

The Changing Context

• Data and the changing role of libraries

• Openness and accessibility

• Economic growth and social impact of knowledge, creativity and culture

• Digital and physical spaces

• Libraries need to work in partnership and consider different funding models for projects

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

UK Web Archive

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

Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and Knowledge Quarter

• Partners include Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, University College London, Warwick

• Initially funded at £42m over 5 years

• Headquartered @ British Library

• Part of Knowledge Quarter

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

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

CompetitionTell us your ideas of what to do with our digital content

AwardsShow us what you have done with our digital content

ProjectsTalk to us about working on collaborative projects

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

Mahendra MaheyManager of British Library Labs

https://goo.gl/lLsiaY/

http://labs.bl.uk 19#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Ben O’SteenTechnical Lead ofBritish Library Labs

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

Example Digital research methods

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

Corpus analysis toolsText Mining

Visualisations

Location based searching

Geotagging

Annotation

Crowdsourcing / Human Computation

Natural Language Processing

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

Transcribing

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

Story of just *one* digital collection

What can 68,000books tell us?

Image: Artwork by Alicia Martin

http://labs.bl.uk 22#bl_labs

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> 260,000,000 views

> 380,000 tags

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

1,020,418 imagesneed tagging!

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

http://labs.bl.uk 23#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Tagging a million imagesHarnessing Crowdsourcing

http://www.metadatagames.org/

http://goo.gl/j6fxac

Cardiff University’sLost Visions ProjectAdam Crymble

BL Labs 2015 Competition Winner

What if crowd sourcing

looked like this?

http://goo.gl/LBfJ4W

Drawing on downtime

Drawing on scarcity of access

Drawing on energy reserved for ‘play’

James Heald

Mario Klingemann

Chico 45

Use computational methods

Human Tagger

Top British Library Flickr Commons Taggers

http://labs.bl.uk 24#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Crowdsourcing Flickr and OtherDigitised Maps

http://www.bl.uk/maps/

http://labs.bl.uk 25#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Political Meetings MapperBL Labs Competition Winner 2015

Katrina Navickas

http://labs.bl.uk 26#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Burning Man 2014 – David NormalCrossroads of Curiosity

http://labs.bl.uk 27#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

David Normal Interview

https://youtu.be/Q3SBxO34Zlc

http://labs.bl.uk 28#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Crossroads of Curiosity at the British Library until Nov 8 2015

http://labs.bl.uk 29#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Visibility - Technology Strategy Board Competition Winner 2014

Understanding value / impact of making the BL’s data open / in the public domain

Peter Balman developed an analytics dashboard for the Library showing what is happening to our Flickr

Images

Initial Pitch: https://www.vimeo.com/94067983Challenge details: http://goo.gl/Hb6l4A

http://labs.bl.uk 30#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

What stories can other digital

collections tell us?

http://labs.bl.uk 31#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Victorian Meme MachineBL Labs 2014 Competition Winner

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

http://victorianhumour.tumblr.com/

http://labs.bl.uk 32#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

http://offthemap.gamecity.org/

http://labs.bl.uk 33#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Off the Map Competition 2013

Pudding Lane Productions, 6 second-year students,De Montfort University, Leicester, won first prize.

http://youtu.be/SPY-hr-8-M0

http://puddinglanedmuga.blogspot.co.uk

Created an interpretation of 17th Century pre-fire London

http://labs.bl.uk 34#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Off the Map Gothic Competition 2014

http://puddinglanedmuga.blogspot.co.uk

Created an interpretation of 17th Century pre-fire LondonCreated a Fonthill Abbey inspired game using Oculus Rift

http://nixgamedevblog.blogspot.co.uk http://youtu.be/8ESieZO4VHwTeam Nix, - Jackson Rolls-Gray, Sebastian Filby and

Faye Allen from the University of South Wales, won first prize.

http://labs.bl.uk 35#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Alice’s Adventures Off the Map 2015

Using Digitised Asset Packs relating to Alice in WonderlandCompetition closed 22 June, Winners announced in late Oct.

http://gamecity.org/alices-adventures-off-the-map/

http://goo.gl/YKrhMD

http://labs.bl.uk 36#bl_labs 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

http://labs.bl.uk 37#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Digital Music LabTransforming Musicology

http://dml.city.ac.ukDocumentary to analyse recordings to find the secrets of musical success

and produce a new performance

http://labs.bl.uk 38#bl_labs labs@bl.uk

Thanks

mahendra.mahey@bl.uk

AGee@Channel4.co.uk