Posted by Mahendra Mahey, BL Labs Manager.

Building Library Labs

Around the world, leading national, state, university and public libraries are creating 'digital lab type environments' so that their digitised and born digital collections / data can be opened up and re-used for creative, innovative and inspiring projects by everyone such as digital researchers, artists, entrepreneurs and educators.

BL Labs, which has now been running for five years, is organising what we believe will be the first ever event of its kind in the world! We are bringing together national, state and university libraries with existing or planned digital 'Labs-style' teams for an invite-only workshop this Thursday 13 September and Friday 14 September, 2018.

A few months ago, we sent out special invitations to these organisations. We were delighted by the excitement generated, and by the tremendous response we received. Over 40 institutions from North America, Europe, Asia and Africa will be attending the workshop at the British Library this week. We have planned plenty of opportunities for networking, sharing lessons learned, and telling each other about innovative projects and services that are using digital collections / data in new and interesting ways. We aim to work together in the spirit of collaboration so that we can continue to build even better Library Labs for our users in the future.

Our packed programme includes:

• 6 presentations covering topics such as those in our international Library Labs Survey;
• 4 stories of how national Library Labs are developing in the UK, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands;
• 12 lightning talks with topics ranging from 3D-Imaging to Crowdsourcing;
• 12 parallel discussion groups focusing on subjects such as funding, technical infrastructure and user engagement;
• 3 plenary debates looking at the value to national Libraries of Labs environments and digital research, and how we will move forward as a group after this event.

We will collate and edit the outputs of this workshop in a report detailing the current landscape of digital Labs in national, state, university and public Libraries around the world.

If you represent one of these institutions, it's still not too late to participate, and you can do so in a few ways:

• Our 'Building Library Labs' survey is still open, and if you work in or represent a digital Library Lab in one of our sectors, your input will be particularly valuable;
• You may be able to participate remotely in this week's event in real time through Skype;
• You can contribute to a collaborative document which delegates are adding to during the event.

If you are interested in one of these options, contact: [email protected].

Please note, that event is being videoed and we will be putting up clips on our YouTube channel soon after the workshop.

We will also return to this blog and let you know how we got on, and how you can access some of the other outputs from the event. Watch this space!