Digital scholarship blog

Enabling innovative research with British Library digital collections

61 posts categorized "Printed books"

24 June 2021

My placement: Using Transkribus to OCR Two Centuries of Indian Print

I began a work placement with the Two Centuries of Indian Print project from the British Library working with my supervisor (Digital Curator) Tom Derrick, to automatically transcribe the Library’s Bengali books digitised and catalogued as part of the project. The OCR application we use for transcription is Transkribus, a leading text recognition application for historical documents. We also use a Google Sheet to instantly update each book’s basic information and job status.

In the first two days, I accepted training in how to use the Transkribus application by a face-to-face (virtual) demonstration from my supervisor since I didn't know how to use OCR. He also provided a manual for me to refer to in my practice. There are three main steps to complete a book transcription: uploading books, running layout analysis, and running text detection. We upload books from the British Library’s IIIF image viewer to Transkribus. I needed to first confirm the name and digital system number of a book from our team’s shared Google Sheet so that I could find the digital content of this book within the BL online catalogue. I would record the number of pages the book has into the Google Sheet at the same time. Then I copied the URL of the IIIF manifest and import this book into the collection of our project in Transkribus. After that, I would run layout analysis in Transkribus. It usually takes several minutes to run, and the more pages there are the more time it will take. Perfect layout analysis is where there is one baseline for each line of text on a page.

Although Transkribus is trained on 100+ pages, it still makes mistakes due to multiple causes. Title or chapter headers whose font size differs significantly from other text sometimes would be missed; patterned dividers and borders in the title page will easily been incorrectly identified as text; sometimes the color of paper is too dark, making it difficult to recognize the text. In these cases, the user needs to manually revise the recognition result. After checking the quality of the text analysis, I could then run text recognition. The final step is to check the results of the text recognition and update the Google Sheet.

TranskribusAppplication

Above: A view of a book in the Transkribus application, showing the page images and transcription underneath

During the three weeks of the placement, I handled a total of twelve books. In addition to the regular progression patterns described earlier, I was fortunate to come across several books that required special handling and used them to learn how to handle various situations. For example, the image above shows the result of text recognition for a page of the first book I dealt with in Transkribus, Dhārāpāta: prathama bhāg. Pāṭhaśālastha śiśu digera śikshārtha/ Cintāmani Pāl. Every word in this book is very short and widely spaced, making it very difficult for Transkribus to identify the layout. Because the book is only 28 pages long, I manually labeled all the layouts.

In addition to my work, I have had the pleasure of interacting with many British Library curators and investigators who are engaged in digitization. I attended a regular meeting of our project and learnt the division of labor of the digital project members. Besides, my supervisor Tom contacted some colleagues who work related to the digitization of Chinese collections and provided me with the opportunity to meet them, which has benefited me a lot.

The Principal Investigator for our 2CIP project, Adi, who also has been involved with research and development of Chinese OCR/HTR at the British Library, shared with me the challenges of Chinese OCR/HTR and the progress of current research at the British Library.

Curator for the International Dunhuang Project, Melodie, and a project manager, Tan, presented the research content and outcomes of the project. This project has many partner institutions in different countries that have collections related to the Silk Road. It is a very meaningful digitization project and I admire the development of this project.

The lead Curator for the British Library’s Chinese collections, Sara, introduced different types of Chinese collections and some representative collections in the British Library to me. She also shared with me the objective problems they would encounter when digitizing collections.

Three weeks passed quickly and I gained a lot from my experience at the British Library. In addition to the specifics of how to use Transkribus for text recognition, I have learned about the achievements and problems faced in digitizing Chinese collections from a variety of perspectives.

This is a guest post by UCL Digital Humanities MSc student Xinran Gu.

05 May 2021

Games in the Library and Games in the Woods

Congratulations to the winner, runners up and everyone who made a game last month for Leeds Libraries Games Jam on Novels That Shaped Our World, which invited jammers to create playful interactive adaptations of books in the BBC’s Novels that Shaped Our World list. To accompany this jam, they programmed a fantastic series of events, which if you missed seeing live, or want to re-watch, can be found in this YouTube playlist.

I absolutely love the premise of the winning submission Frankenstein's Double Wedding, Or, The Modern P…romeo…ethius by WretchedBees (Will Binns). You need a deck of cards to play this solo or cooperative game. Playing as Dr. Frankenstein, with the help of both your monster and betrothed, the game’s aim is to organise a double wedding, arranging catering, a florist, a venue and inviting wedding guests. Not forgetting, that you also need to create a spouse for your monster, before you can both get wed.

A silhoutte profile of a face looking to the left with a bolt of lightning in the face. There are also brains in lightbulbs and the spade, club, diamond and heart symbols from playing cards
Frankenstein's Double Wedding, Or, The Modern P…romeo…ethius by WretchedBees

Well deserved recognition also goes to the two runners up, these are The Open Wizarding Challenge by Suzini56, where to win, players navigate rooms and corridors of their wizarding school, dodging moving staircases and obstacles, aiming to be the first to reach the exit with their bag of collected items, picked up on the way. Also, Fortune of War: A game of Napoleonic era Naval Life by webcowgirl, which is based on Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander books. Writing about her submission she says “this game tries to capture the flavor of the books, with its humor and humanity. Winning isn't just about money, it is ultimately also about pride, honor, and dignity.” Something we would all do well to remember.

A boardgame on a table with a paper ship at the centre of the board, and pot plants behind it
Fortune of War: A game of Napoleonic era Naval Life by webcowgirl

Other #NTSOWgamesjam submissions re-worked Pride and Prejudice, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener. You can check these out on the jam’s itch.io entries page. Being a Sandman graphic novels fan, I enjoyed looking at Of You by DarrenLEdwards, which has been structured so this tabletop roleplaying game could also be based on many other fantastical worlds such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Neverending Story, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, The Chronicles of Narnia, His Dark Materials etc.

If exploring fantasy worlds and playing games has inspired you to want to make a game, or if you are a seasoned game maker, then you may want to take part in our Games In the Woods jam this month, which I am running with Ash Green, Marion Tessier from Story Circles and Kingston Upon Thames Libraries, and Cheryl Tipp. This is an online tree themed game jam for all ages, which will run throughout the duration of the Urban Tree Festival. There will be an online launch event on Saturday 15th May with inspiring examples of interactive digital experiences featuring trees and a virtual “show & tell” event on Sunday 23rd May for jammers to celebrate their creations.

Before and during the Urban Tree Festival, game jammers can meet and chat with organisers and each other on our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/qWXH8NcjHE, so please join and say hello on there and use #gamesinthewoods on social media to share images and details of your work in progress.

A wood with a deer standing to the left and a fox standing on the right
Games in the Woods game jam

You are welcome to join alone or in a team to create digital and analogue games, interactive fiction, web comics, board games, escape games, card games – anything you want! The only constraints are time, the theme and your imagination. We especially encourage creative re-use of images from the British Library’s Flickr collection of digitised 19th century books, do check out these online Flora and Fauna galleries. There is also a fantastic curated selection of wildlife and environmental sound recordings picked by my colleague Cheryl Tipp, which you can use in your creations. These are available via this SoundCloud playlist.

Portrait photographs of Sue Thomas, Irini Papadimitriou and Cheryl Tipp
Sue Thomas, Irini Papadimitriou and Cheryl Tipp

Cheryl is also speaking at a free Digital Nature online event next Monday, 10th May, 19:30 - 20:30. Chaired by Irini Papadimitriou, Creative Director at Future Everything, this event also features Ben Eaton from Invisible Flock (read more about their woodland work Faint Signals here), and author of books on nature and technology Sue Thomas. This is part of the British Library’s springtime season of events The Natural Word, which explores nature writing and reflects on our need to reimagine our relationship with the environment. Hope to see you there.

This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom)

20 April 2021

A Novel Approach To Novels That Shaped Our World!

It is wonderful to be collaborating with Leeds Libraries on their online Games Jam this month, which is encouraging people to create playful interactive adaptations of books in the BBC’s Novels that Shaped Our World list.

An open book with the pages coming to life with a dragon, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes and Discworld
Eye-catching artwork for the Games Jam created by Amy Evans (@tiger_tea) https://www.tiger-tea.co.uk/

In my experience game jams are a brilliant way of bringing historic and literary digital library and archive collections to life in a completely new way. I’ve ran a few at the British Library and I’m always keen to share what I’ve learned with other libraries, including contributing to Living Knowledge Network skills sharing events, such as one we held on the topic of games and playfulness in libraries, in November 2017 at Leeds Central Library, you can read more about this here.

3 people sitting at a table doing a games activity
@_jerryjenkins @ggnewed & @ella_snell doing a puzzle escape game in a box by @lizcable at a #LivingKnowledgeNetwork skills day (image © Stella Wisdom)

There are endless possibilities for adapting works of literature into games and interactive experiences. Earlier this year I attended an Oxford/London IF meetup group online event, where Emily Short gave a fascinating talk about the storylet game design process for creating Orwell’s Animal Farm an indie adventure game, which is based on George Orwell’s novel, where all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. There is a review of this game here.

Leeds Libraries have programmed a range of online events to inspire creativity, as part of their games jam. Last week I attended a thought provoking workshop led by Liz Cable on how to create literary escape rooms. It made me think of a very atmospheric Dracula inspired escape room called Carfax, situated in a sandstone cave system, which I had visited in Nottingham a few years ago. During the covid-19 pandemic Cave Escape have reworked this game into an online escape experience called Carfax - The Hunter, so anyone can play a version of this game from home.

Liz has a wealth of knowledge about all types of game making tools, apps and platforms, which she generously shares. I first met her at the MIX conference at Bath Spa University back in 2015, where she took me and a few other conference delegates to an escape room in Bath. This was the first time I had been to one; so it was Liz who opened my eyes to a new world of escape game experiences! 

There are still more excellent Leeds Libraries Games Jam online events coming up this week:

All these events can be booked from Leeds Libraries Eventbrite page and if you want to watch recordings of previous events, check out their Novels That Shaped Our World YouTube playlist.

The Novels that Shaped Our World jam itself is taking place over Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th April. Thanks to Libraries Connected and Arts Council England there is a £150 prize for the winner and two £50 prizes for the runners up. More information can be found here.

If you are considering taking part, but are unsure where to start, then you may also be interested in reading this Writing Tools for Interactive Fiction blog post by my colleague Giulia Carla Rossi, which describes a number of free online tools that don’t require any previous programming knowledge. I also recommend joining the jam's Facebook group, where participants can talk to each other and ask questions. Good luck if you make and submit a game, I’m looking forward to reading and playing the entries.

This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom)

15 March 2021

Competition to Proofread Bengali Books on Wikisource

Can you read and write in Bangla? Or should I say আপনি কি বাংলা পড়তে এবং লিখতে পারেন? If you were able to read that, congratulations, you are the perfect candidate!

You might be interested in a competition we have launched today asking for help to proofread text that has been automatically transcribed from our historical Bengali books. The competition, in partnership with the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, and the Bengali Wikisource community, will run until 14th April and invites contributors to create perfect transcriptions of the books.  

More information is available on the Wikisource competition page, including how to get started and prizes on offer.

The books have been digitised through our Two Centuries of Indian Print project, with more than 25 uploaded to Wikisource, an online and free-content digital library where it is possible to view the digitised books and corresponding transcriptions side-by-side. We were inspired by a talk given by the National Library of Scotland who uploaded some of their collections to Wikisource, and thought it could be a useful platform to increase online access to the textual content in our books too.

 

2CIPBook_Wikisource

Above: A view of a Bengali book within the Wikisource platform showing digitised page [R] and transcription [L]

 

Luckily a lot of the transcription work has already been done through using Google’s Optical Character Recognition technology (OCR) to read the Bengali text. However, the results are not perfect, with words in the original books often misspelled in the OCR. That’s where we need human intervention to proofread the OCR and fix the mistakes.

We also want to export proofread transcriptions from Wikisource and make them available as a dataset that could prove interesting to researchers who want to mine thousands of pages of text.

The books we would like proofread cover a multitude of topics and include an adaptation of the Illiad, a book containing a collection of 19th century proverbs and sayings, and a work describing the Bratas fasting ceremonies observed by the Hindu women of what is now Bangladesh. So, if you are looking for a literary indulgence whilst at the same time helping to improve access for others to valuable historical material, this could be an ideal opportunity.

 

This post is by Digital Curator Tom Derrick (@TommyID83)

24 December 2020

BL Labs Awards Symposium 2020, Rewind, Reflections, Box-sets and Seasons Greetings

Posted by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs.

This action packed, detailed 'rewind' and festive bumper edition blog post about last week's largest ever BL Labs Awards Symposium 2020, contains some hidden seasonal gifts🎁(if you read very carefully) to bring you seasonal cheer. The post rounds off a difficult and challenging 2020 for the BL Labs team and I am sure for everyone else.

In the new year, we will release this post in a series of shorter parts, but for now you have the opportunity to read the whole account together.

BL Labs Awards Symposium 2020 - detailed report

MENU (Jump to different sections)

  1. About the BL Labs Awards Symposium 2020
  2. Rewind the BL Labs Symposium 2020
  3. Feedback on the Symposium
  4. Keynote by Ruth Ahnert
  5. End keynote by Anasuya Sengupta
  6. BL Labs update by Mahendra Mahey
  7. Digital Research Team update by Adi Keinan-Schoonbeart
  8. Research Services update by Rachael Kortarski
  9. BL Labs Public Awards 2020
  10. BL Labs People's Choice Public Award 2020
  11. BL Labs Staff Awards 2020
  12. BL Labs Box Sets
  13. Conclusion

The BL Labs Awards Symposium 2020 is an annual event and awards ceremony showcasing innovative projects that use, experiment with and have been inspired by the British Library's physical and digital collections and data through BL Labs and / or through collaborations with other people in and outside the Library.

The Labs symposium provides a platform for highlighting and engaging with the British Library’s and other  GalleriesLibrariesArchives and Museums or (GLAMs) through their Labs or similar facilities that enable, support and encourage access and experimentation with their digital collections and data for research, inspiration and enjoyment.

For those GLAMs and / or organisations that don't have similar digital Labs, would like one, support the concept of experimentation with their digital collections generally, or even for those that haven't engaged with GLAM Labs before, why not join our GLAM Labs mailing list or slack channel 🎁 to start a conversation with us. 

You can also download our 🎁 book 'Open a GLAM Lab' to read over this festive period to inspire you to start on your own personal journey into the world of GLAM Labs.

The BL Labs Awards this year recognised outstanding use of British Library's digital content in the categories of Research, Artistic, Educational, Community and British Library staff contributions. Through the BL Labs Public Awards 2020, we made a special request for project submissions about or developed during this century-defining COVID-19 pandemic and / or a request for work that focused on some of the current BL Labs priorities, namely anti-racism (especially in the context for racial equality globally) and the use of Jupyter Notebooks for computational research with data.

Our eighth annual symposium took place for the first time entirely online via the 'Zoom Webinar' platform and was broadcast live and simultaneously on YouTube between 1400-1700 GMT on Tuesday 15 December 2020. We have also had a suggestion from Sarah Cole to try out an alternative platform called 'Hopin'🎁, which we will definitely be looking at (Sarah was a previous BL Labs Awards Commercial Award runner-up with Poetic Places🎁and had two other submissions one for the Awards  - 'Badigical Kingdom: Repurposing Public Domain Images to Make Badges🎁and an idea submitted for the BL Labs competition called 'The Maniacal Curator: A Tabletop Game using the British Library Flickr Collection'🎁).

We had over 350 unique attendees who participated live in the Labs symposium. People came from all over the world, ranging from Europe, the USA and Australia and from different academic fields and professional sectors.  The total number of viewers who have now watched the symposium is steadily rising largely because of those who are watching it after the live broadcast, we really hope the event will reach a wider global audience over time. I feel the way we consume events such as the symposium as well as other types of 'conferences' will be more online and be the new 'normal' in the future. It's clear that what is currently happening to the events' industry happened to terrestrial broadcast TV a number of years ago, in that it has now largely  a mostly on-demand service. Having over 350 viewers for a live online broadcast may seem like a modest number, however for us, this was actually the most number of live attendees we have ever had for our symposium and an opportunity for many to attend who were never able to attend previously because of time zone clashes and not being able to be physically present in London. We were especially pleased with this number, considering that there were a host of other similar online events going on at exactly the same time. So in case you missed it, you can still watch it for the first time (see details below as to how) or watch it again in case you missed something specific.

Going completely online for our symposium this year was a new 'experiment' for us in the BL Labs team.  We really wanted to ensure that the online version should still try to capture the spirit of the awards symposium, i.e. keep the audience engaged right through to the end, inject some fun, make it a true celebration and enable people to connect with each other. We learned a lot from the experience, we knew that there would inevitably be some teething problems however we are pretty pleased with how things went and what we were able to achieve given the time and resources we had available.

Embracing and learning from our mistakes is something we constantly do in a 'Labs' context, fail fast and better. It's part of my own guiding professional principles and something I constantly say when I speak to people who want to engage with BL Labs, especially when we work on experimental projects. A superb example which exemplifies and illustrates this philosophy is in a book by Shawn Graham, in Failing Gloriously and other Essays 🎁in which he documents his personal, entertaining, humorous, insightful and honest journey through digital humanities and digital archaeology against the backdrop of the 21st-century university.

Dan van Strien's Tweet about the BL Labs Symposium 2020
Dan van Strien's tweet about the 'build up' video before the BL Labs Symposium 2020 started, describing a 'clubbing' vibe' with music and graphics.
My colleague Filipe Bento (Technical Lead for BL Labs) was responsible for this as well as other snazzy videos during transitions between breaks and presenters. We hope they injected a bit of fun and a taste and spirit of an MTV style awards show into the event.

The online version of the symposium has sparked some great ideas for me personally in how to run events like this and we hope to implement some new innovations and experiments in the future.

Did you miss attending the BL Labs Awards Symposium 2020 or want to watch a part or the whole thing again?

You can view the recorded live footage of the Symposium below via YouTube below:


🎁Recording of the YouTube live-stream of the 8th BL Labs Symposium, 15 December 2020, conducted on Zoom Webinar.

If you prefer, you may want to 'skip' to key moments in the programme detailed in the list of links below:

14:00 - 14:05  Welcome and introduction (skip to this section)
Maja Maricevic, Head of Higher Education and Science, British Library

14:05 - 14:45 Humanists Living with Machines: reflections on collaboration and computational history during a global pandemic (skip to this section)
Ruth Ahnert, Professor of Literary History and Digital Humanities at Queen Mary University of London  and Principal Investigator on 'Living With Machines' at The Alan Turing Institute.

14:45- 14:55  BL Labs update (skip to to this section)
Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs, British Library

15:10 - 15:15 Research Award (skip to this section) 
Naomi Billingsley, Research Development Manager, British Library

15:15 - 15:25  Digital Scholarship projects update (skip to this section) 
Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Digital Curator, Asian and African Collections, the British Library.

15:25 – 15:30  The Artistic Award (skip to this section)
Jamie Andrews, Head of Culture and Learning, British Library

15:30 - 15:40  Research Services update (skip to this section)
Rachael Kotarski, Head of Research Infrastructure Services, British Library

15:40 - 15:45  The Teaching & Learning Award (skip to this section)
Ria Bartlett, Lead Producer: Onsite Learning at the British Library
(Please note that some of the videos shown in this section had poor audio and can be seen and heard again in our BL Labs Public Awards 2020 YouTube Playlist)

16:10 – 16:15  The Community Award (skip to this section)
Liz White, Head of Public Libraries and Community Engagement

16:15 - 16:25  The British Library Staff Award (skip to this section)
Jas Rai, Head of People, British Library
(Please note that some of the videos shown in this section had no audio and can be seen and heard again in our BL Labs Staff Awards YouTube playlist 2020.)

16:25 – 17:05  How to Decolonise the British Library in 3 (Un)Easy Step (skip to this section)
Anasuya Sengupta, Co-Director, Whose Knowledge?

17:05 – 17:15  'People's Favourite BL Labs Award' the RESULT and closing comments (skip to this section)
Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs, British Library

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Feedback on Symposium (during and after)

We have received some really positive comments about the event from live participants who rated it with an average of 8.9 out of 10 in terms of overall satisfaction by completing an event feedback survey at the time the event was live.

Comments included:

  • 'It was excellent, especially the opening and closing talks'
  • 'Getting a 'save the date' a bit earlier as there was a clash between many similar events online'
  • 'Having an event half way through the year would be great to give an update on BL Labs and other Digital Research projects as there are so many of them!!'

There were several other useful constructive comments which we are definitely going to think about and consider taking on board for future events and activities.

Calls to action

Participants on the day also logged 'calls to action' i.e. things they were going to do as a result of the event or things they wanted to encourage others to do:

  • 'Everyone must all watch the recordings and listen to the papers!'
  • 'Everyone who has done something relevant should enter the Awards, even if they're not sure that their work fits'
  • 'The event seemed quite academic, but it shed a light on how the digital archives are being used even if not all the terms are understood by the layman'
  • 'Several of the speakers highlighted extremely important topics that necessitate further engagement and research'
  • 'Machine learning based labelling and annotation and novel visualisation techniques to explore archives is something I am going to look into'
  • 'My personal research interest is identity (ethnic, cultural, religious, language, etc.) and how it is expressed both in literature and culture more generally by immigrants from other countries and cultures. I now have ideas of digital ways to pursue this within the BL collections as opposed to simply printed books'
  • 'Separate to the learning award, could there be a schools award? I'm thinking that maybe BL Labs could set a task and invite any school to take part'
  • The work on decolonaziation should be continued
  • 'Oral history archives - accessing transcripts, sound recordings and contextual information from a range of collections that could illuminate my current research based on published books of fiction and non-fiction in English'

Format for next year's event?

Interestingly, there was an overwhelming plea from participants that next year's event should be 'hybrid', online with an option to attend physically if possible. We will try our best (vaccines permitting) to consider this!

Feedback on watching as a pre-recorded event

If you do end up watching the recorded footage, it would really be incredibly helpful for us to receive your feedback about what you liked and what could be improved. This is in order to help us to continue justifying investing so much time and resources in organising such events. Please let us know what you thought about it, through our feedback page 🎁(your gift to us) or on social media / twitter using the @BL_Labs handle.

Behind the scenes team

The team 'behind the scenes' were:

8th BL Labs Symposium Organising Team8th BL Labs Symposium Organising Team
Top (Left to right) - Mahendra Mahey (BL Labs Manager), Filipe Bento (BL Labs Technical Lead), Robin Saklatvala (Event Manager)
Bottom (left to right) - Maja Maricevic (Head of Higher Education and Science), Ruth Hansford (Endangered Archives Programme Grants Portfolio Manager), Dan van Strien (Digital Curator with Living with Machines), Rossitza Atassanova (Digital Curator, Digitisation)
 
Mahendra Mahey, BL Labs Manager behind the screen
Mahendra Mahey, BL Labs Manager 'behind' the screen during the BL Labs Awards Symposium 2020

I would like to thank them all, especially Filipe and Robin who with me, did the heavy lifting.

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Welcome address from Maja Marcievic

Maja Maricevic, is the Head of Higher Education and Sciences at the British Library and manages me. She welcomed everyone who was attending the symposium and was 'master of ceremonies' for the first block of talks detailing some essential housekeeping duties. She then gave a summary of the direction that BL Labs will be moving into the future and detailed how the BL Labs team have been supporting and shining a light on research, artistic, educational as well as showcasing the incredibly important work which focuses on community activism over the year. Finally, she formally introduced the keynote speaker.

Keynote: Humanists Living with Machines: reflections on collaboration and computational history during a global pandemic

This year's keynote was delivered by Ruth Ahnert, Professor of Literary History and Digital Humanities at Queen Mary University of London and Principal Investigator on 'Living With Machines' project at The Alan Turing Institute.

Ruth spoke passionately and very engagingly about her impressive journey and rise as a literary historian. Ruth's academic work has increasingly involved using computational approaches. She highlighted some of the latest results from the Living With Machines project and included descriptions of some poignant and personal reflections on how the Digital Humanities community have been effected by recent developments such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and the push provided by the Black Lives Matter movement for memory organisations to provide greater transparency to their collections. Many of the attendees responded enthusiastically to Ruth's talk and there was a lot of buzz on social media about it. She was even able to answer 5 questions from the audience at the end of her talk.

We are also very excited to announce that Ruth has joined the BL Labs Advisory board and was part of this year's judging panel for our Public Awards 2020. We are delighted that her energy, warmth, humanity and enthusiasm will be helping shape the future of BL Labs moving forward.

You can download her full set of slides as a PDF from here 🎁.

You can follow Ruth on Twitter.

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End Keynote: How to Decolonise the British Library in 3 (Un)Easy Steps

Anasuya Sengupta, Co-Director and co-founder of Whose Knowledge? explored the notions of epistemic injustice and how different structures of power and privilege impact the ways we understand (digital) knowledge and scholarship. In particular, she offered some practices of decolonisation that might move us from metaphor to the ongoing (and never complete) transformation of our organisations and ourselves. Her talk was extremely well received by the audience with very positive comments and feedback such as 'Incredible presentation from Anasuya'. Thank you Anasuya for delivering a very powerful talk.

For me personally, Anasuya's presentation resonated deeply and emotionally. As someone who has a lived experience of racism, prejudice and castetism (as I am of Indian decent) I am very aware of the British Library's / Museum's colonial past and conversely I also try to be aware of my privilege and my awareness that changing things for the better starts with our own individual actions, no matter how small they may be. Her talk reminded me of my own efforts and motivations in trying to address some of these issues when I came to help set up the Lab nearly eight years ago. I saw that BL Labs could help facilitate opening up the Library's collections through digital experimentation. Subsequently, I have wanted it to connect with a new set of diverse audiences that previously would have never even known about the British Library, let alone engage with it. I really want to help people to create new, open, honest transparent narratives and initiate new dialogues about history and tell new inspirational 'time-travel' stories by remixing the past with the present and projecting into an imagined future. This was and still is one of my main motivations to get up in the morning and to continue to manage and lead BL Labs.

One of Anasuya's final slides brilliantly sums up what is needed:

Anasuya Sengupta's call to action
Anasuya Sengupta's call to action

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the British Library's BAME (Black and Minority Ethnic) staff group for all their hard work in especially addressing anti-racism at the British Library over many years, which I know can be exhausting and emotionally draining and is often not always visible. I would like to raise awareness that our new head of diversity, appointed in August 2019, Hugh Brown has been looking at implementing actions to combat anti-racism within the Library, largely articulated in a press release this summer about the Library's commitment in becoming an anti-racist organisation.

You can download her full set slides as a PDF from here 🎁.

You can also follow Anasuya on Twitter.

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Updates from BL Labs', Digital Research's and Research Services' Teams at the British Library Library

BL Labs

I gave an update on behalf of the BL Labs Team about our activities and I looked forward to new projects and developments some of which are already underway. There was a call to action for people to seek their inner 'Labber', to experiment, create magic, tell fantastic engaging, moving and meaningful stories and conduct valuable and impactful research with the British Library's and other GLAMs' digital collections and data.

Francis Owtram Tweet
Francis Owtram's Tweet

I gave an overview of some details with statistics of work we have done up to now.  There was a personal reflection of my own struggles through this ongoing pandemic period. One BL Labs project that is close to completion is to provide computational access via browser based Jupyter Notebooks for British Library registered readers for some onsite-only available digital collections and data. Another BL Labs project is about building on and getting more of our data used in Higher Education and in the Sciences, especially Data Science, hopefully you will hear more about this in the new year.

You can download my full set slides as a PDF from here🎁.

You can follow me (Mahendra) on Twitter, the @BL_Labs twitter channel which is getting near to 9,000 followers and @GLAM_labs which represents the global GLAM Labs community. All of which I am proud to say I helped set up and run with colleagues.

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Digital Research Team

Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Digital Curator, Asian and African Collections, at the British Library, presented some highlights of the incredible range of innovative projects and work being done by her and our colleagues in the Digital Research team at the British Library over the last year, such as:

You can download the full set slides as a PDF from here🎁.

You can also follow Adi on Twitter and members of her team, Rossitza Atassanova, Mia Ridge, Tom Derrick, Stella Wisdom, Nora McGregor, Deirdre Sullivan , Dan van Strien, Olivia Vane, Giorgia Tolfo, Claire Austin, some of whom are managed by Neil Fitzgerald.

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Research Services Update

Rachael Kotarski, Head of Research Infrastructure Services at the British Library, gave some highlights of current projects and services in the Research Services team. Their role is to improve the services the Library offers to researchers and research organisations - onsite and online, BL Labs has been collaborating with them for many years. A particular focus of her team is to make it easier to find and use items from our collections and relevant content globally such as license, acquire and process content, understand our users, what is our content strategy, digital preservation and tools and infrastructure. Highlights from Rachael's presentation include:

You can download the full set slides as a PDF from here 🎁.

You can follow Rachael on Twitter.

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BL Labs Public Awards 2020

The BL Labs Public Awards 2020 winners in Research, Artistic, Educational and Community categories were decided by BL Labs, the BL Labs Advisory Board and some of the British Library's Digital Research team:

From the BL Labs Advisory Board it included:

  • David De Roure, Professor of e-research, Oxford e-research Centre, University of Oxford and Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute
  • Tim Hitchcock, Professor of Digital History, University of Sussex
  • Bill Thompson, Principal Research Engineer, BBC
  • Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh‘s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
  • Ruth Ahnert, Professor of Literary History and Digital Humanities at Queen Mary University of London and Principal Investigator on 'Living With Machines' at The Alan Turing Institute (joined in December 2020)
  • Kelly Foster, open knowledge advocate and public historian, London Blue Badge Guide, chapter lead for Creative Commons UK and founding organiser of AfroCROWD UK, an initiative to encourage more people of African heritage to contribute to Wikipedia and it’s sister projects and founding member of TRANSMISSION, a collective of archivists and historians of African descent (joined in December 2020)

Unfortunately, Andrew Prescott, Professor of Digital Humanities (English Language), University of Glasgow was unable to participate due to a clash with a PhD viva. However, he was able to participate on the day as a delegate at the symposium.

On a sad note, our colleague George Oates, Director of Good, Form & Spectacle Ltd has had to step down from the BL Labs Advisory Board after 4 years of excellent service for personal reasons, so we would like to wish George and thank her for all her help over the years.

From the British Library, the judging panel was made up of:

We had a wide range of fantastic and diverse range of entries from around the world this year, all of which can be downloaded as a .zip file. If you are curious about previous years Awards entries, you can also download all our Award entries since its inception🎁. We also strongly recommend you browse the huge BL Labs Digital Projects Archive 🎁where information about this year's entries together with over 300 projects and many BL Labs collaborations, competitions and projects over the nearly last 8 years BL Labs has been involved in or showcased can found. We keep this archive as a historic record to provide evidence of the impact of BL Labs and what it does as well as other initiatives in the Library. The archive could also provide inspiration and insights for you if you are contemplating starting your own projects or collaborations using the Library's and other GLAMs' digital collections and data.

Brief information about which entries were shortlisted this year (2020) can be viewed in just five minutes via a YouTube play list of 10 shortlisted entries for the Public Awards 2020:

BL Labs Public Awards 2020 - Playlist
BL Labs Public Awards 2020 - YouTube playlist of ten 30-second videos

So now onto the BL Labs Awards for 2020 by category.

Research Award

The BL Labs Research Award recognises a project or activity which demonstrates the development of new knowledge, research methods, or tools using the Library’s digital collections or data.

The winners were announced by my colleague Naomi Billingsley, Research Development Manager, at the British Library, her slide deck is available to download here 🎁.

Shortlisted

  • Afrobits
    An interactive installation of African music and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade .

    By Javier Pereda (Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design and Illustration and Researcher in the Experimental Technologies Lab, Liverpool John Moores University), Patricia Murrieta Flores (Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities, Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Hub at Lancaster University), Nicholas Radburn (Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World 1500 – 1800, Co-Editor of the Slave Voyages Research Project, Lancaster University), Lois South (History Graduate, Liverpool John Moores University) and Christian Monaghan, Graphic Design and Illustration Graduate, Liverpool John Moores University.


    Links: Short videolonger videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

Runner-up

  • Unlocking our Sound Heritage - Artist in Residence 2019-2020: The Unearthed Odyssey
    Research project culminating in two performances, a genre-bending conceptual Afrofuturist album using 19 samples from the Sound Archive, three comprehensive blogs and work with three youth groups to unpack the themes and content.

    By AWATE (Awate Suleiman - rapper and multimedia artist, England)


    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details

Panel comments

The judging panel we were simply 'blown away' by Awate's work.

Winner

  • Asking questions with web archives – introductory notebooks for historians
    16 Jupyter notebooks that demonstrate how specific historical research questions can be explored by analysing data from web archives.

    By Tim Sherratt (Associate Professor of Digital Heritage at the University of Canberra and founder and creator of the GLAM workbench), Andrew Jackson (Technical Lead - UK Web Archive, British Library), Alex Osborne (Technical Lead Australian Web Archive - National Library of Australia),  Ben O’Brien (Technical Lead New Zealand Web Archive - National Library of New Zealand) and Olga Holownia (International Internet Preservation Coalition (IIPC) Programmes & Communications Officer)

    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

Panel comments

Congratulations Tim Sherratt, Andrew Jackson; Alex Osborne, Ben O’Brien and Olga Holownia. The panel were impressed with the quality of documentation and thought that went into how to work computationally through Jupyter Notebooks with web archives, which are challenging to work with because of their. These tools are some of the first of their kind for Web Archives.

The BL Labs advisory board wanted to acknowledge and reward the incredible work of Tim Sherratt in particular.

"Tim, you have been a pioneer as ‘a one person Lab’ over many years, and these 16 notebooks are a fine addition to your already extensive suite in your GLAM work-bench. Your work has inspired so many in GLAMs, the Humanities community and BL Labs to develop their own notebooks".

We strongly recommend that you look at the GLAM work-bench if you are interested in doing computational experiments with many institutions’ data sources, we genuinely think Tim's work has been at the forefront of computational hacking work in GLAMs.

Artistic Award

This Award recognises an artistic or creative endeavour that has used the Library’s digital content to inspire, amaze and provoke. This year's Awards were announced for the fourth time by Jamie Andrews, Head of Culture and Learning, British Library, his slide deck is available here🎁.

Special commendation

  • Afrobits
    An interactive installation of African music and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade .

    By Javier Pereda (Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design and Illustration and Researcher in the Experimental Technologies Lab, Liverpool John Moores University), Patricia Murrieta Flores (Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities, Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Hub at Lancaster University), Nicholas Radburn (Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World 1500 – 1800, Co-Editor of the Slave Voyages Research Project, Lancaster University), Lois South (History Graduate, Liverpool John Moores University) and Christian Monaghan, Graphic Design and Illustration Graduate, Liverpool John Moores University.


    Links: Short videolonger videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

Panel comments

This is an interactive installation of influence of African music on culture and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. It's a piece that is absolutely vital for our times.

Panel comments

Rosyln's work is a celebration of black heritage through black afro hair developed in the context of doing something positive given negative images of police brutality against black people around the world. She used images of Bantu, Balondo and Akan men and women from British Library’s Flickr Commons collection, using them to make patterns for fabrics and wallpapers, t-shirts and mugs and intend to use the fabrics to make other products. The panel loved how Rosyln created some positive out of the tremendous negativity that has been directed towards black people around the world. The team liked the designs, they were vibrant, fresh and cool.

Runner-up

Panel comments

This entry was very well received by everyone. The panel felt Faint Signals was wonderfully inventive use of the environmental sounds collection, clever imaginative use of Unity 3D technology, perfect impact over the COVID period. It's a piece that draws you in, that is relaxing and rather beguiling and certainly in these challenging times when travelling is impossible, and perhaps travelling into nature is difficult, this gives you a sense of the glories and the vastness of the sounds of nature.

Winner

  • Unlocking our Sound Heritage - Artist in Residence 2019-2020: The Unearthed Odyssey
    Research project culminating in two performances, a genre-bending conceptual Afrofuturist album using 19 samples from the Sound Archive, three comprehensive blogs and work with three youth groups to unpack the themes and content.

    By AWATE (Awate Suleiman - rapper and multimedia artist, England)


    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details

Panel comments

The panel were incredibly moved by the performance of Awate. They were impressed by the quality of story telling and research needed to stitch together such powerful archive footage such as Grace Nichols’ poem ‘I have crossed an ocean’ (see below):

A reading's of Grace's work is available to listen to onsite at the British Library, together with other recordings of extraordinary people.

Congratulations to Awate, for creating this captivating performance, and I think, gave all of us who experienced it, goose bumps! We strongly urge you to please listen to his work, it’s very moving and inspiring.

Learning and Teaching (Educational) Award

This Award celebrates quality learning experiences created for learners of any age and ability that use the Library's digital content. This year's awards were announced for the third time by Ria Bartlett, Lead Producer: Onsite Learning at the British Library, her slide deck is available here.

Special Commendation

Panel comments

The panel were particularly impressed by the quality of the tool produced by a student in their own time and his generosity and kindness to share the tool for the benefit of all. Also, this is the first time an Endangered Archives Programme's (EAP) digitised collections have been recognised with a BL Labs award. We hope many more projects will be submitted in the future that use EAP’s incredible range of digital collections.

  • Unlocking our Sound Heritage - Artist in Residence 2019-2020: The Unearthed Odyssey
    Research project culminating in two performances, a genre-bending conceptual Afrofuturist album using 19 samples from the Sound Archive, three comprehensive blogs and work with three youth groups to unpack the themes and content.

    by AWATE (Awate Suleiman - rapper and multimedia artist, England)


    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details

Panel comments

We were particularly impressed how Awate worked with young people to unpack his journey of research in the British Library to make his piece, teaching at The Roundhouse in Camden and Fairbeats in Lewisham and recording voices from children from London to be included in some of his pieces, which was a geat honour for them. We particularly liked the narrative you created. The story takes place on a generation ship, during the one day a year a group of children are awake for a lesson taught to them by an artificial intelligence tutor. The tutor uses an algorithm to sample from the British Library archive from the years 1896-2019 in order to tell them stories of human migration using clips from Oral History recordings. As they are travelling to a different planet, the AI places them in the greater context of migration, exploring themes such as war, corruption, famine and drought.

Well done Awate! We urge you all to listen to his ‘The Unearthed Odyssey’ performance, it’s brilliant.

Runner-up

  • Inspiring computationally-driven research with the BL’s collections: a GLAM Notebooks approach
    Enabling cultural heritage institutions and (digital) humanities researchers to experiment with Collections as Data and GLAM notebooks by showcasing practical implementations from a wide range of GLAM institutions and digital collections. 

    By Gustavo CandelaPilar EscobarMaría Dolores Sáez and Manuel Marco-Such  from the Research Libraries Team, Department of Software and Computing Systems, the University of Alicante, Spain

    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

Panel comments

We were impressed that the notebooks the team have developed are being used in the team's own teaching on university courses. We also liked how the team have very generously created Jupyter Notebooks for other GLAMs' data, where many do not have the capacity to do so. That’s 15 notebooks for 12 GLAMs.

Winner

  • Beyond the Rubric: Collaborating with the Cultural Heritage Sector in Higher Education Teaching and Research
    A project-based, research-led collaboration between the British Library and students of the Centre for Digital Humanities Research at the Australian National University.

    By Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller (Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)


    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details

Panel comments

Well done Terhi and especially her students who produced such outstanding work in only 12 weeks through their group projects. The panel felt this was an exemplary use of the British Library’s digital collections and data in a Digital Scholarship context and an excellent template for further collaboration with BL Labs and other GLAM Labs working with educational institutions especially in area of Digital Humanities. We were particularly impressed with Terhi’s grading criteria that recognised ambition in projects and Terhi’s decision to have interdisciplinary, gender-balanced, multi-lingual project groups.

Community

This Award celebrates an activity / work / project that has been created by an individual or group in a community inspired by or using our digital collections and data. This year's awards were announced for first time by Liz White, Head of Public Libraries and Community Engagement, her slide deck is available here.

Special Commendation

  • Inspiring computationally-driven research with the BL’s collections: a GLAM Notebooks approach
    Enabling cultural heritage institutions and (digital) humanities researchers to experiment with Collections as Data and GLAM notebooks by showcasing practical implementations from a wide range of GLAM institutions and digital collections. 

    By Gustavo CandelaPilar EscobarMaría Dolores Sáez and Manuel Marco-Such  from the Research Libraries Team, Department of Software and Computing Systems, the University of Alicante, Spain

    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

Panel comments

This entry was in fact the most nominated across 3 of the 4 BL Labs public Awards categories. The panel particularly loved the generosity of the group in developing computational access to 12 Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum’s (GLAMs) data through 15 Jupyter Notebooks, including the British Library. Many of these institutions do not have the capacity or expertise to do this, so this was some really kind and fantastic work moving these organisations forward computationally. A great contribution to the GLAM Labs community, initiated of course by Mahendra at BL Labs. Find out more about GLAM Labs at glamlabs.io.

Special Commendation

  • Unlocking our Sound Heritage - Artist in Residence 2019-2020: The Unearthed Odyssey
    Research project culminating in two performances, a genre-bending conceptual Afrofuturist album using 19 samples from the Sound Archive, three comprehensive blogs and work with three youth groups to unpack the themes and content.

    By AWATE (Awate Suleiman - rapper and multimedia artist, England)


    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details

Panel comments

We were particularly impressed how Awate worked with British Library staff before and during lockdown, with school children from South London to unpack his journey of research in the British Library to make his piece. He also taught at the Roundhouse in Camden and Fairbeats in Lewisham and recorded voices from local children to be included in some of his pieces, a great honour for them.  Well done Awate, great work!

Winner

  • Flickr Georeferencing completed by volunteers
    Volunteer georeferencers have added coordinates to all the images of over 50,000 maps from the British Library's Flickr Commons site.

    By 'Volunteer geo-referencers' nominated by Gethen Rees, Digital Mapping Curator, British Library


    Links: Short videoFull BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

Panel comments

Volunteer Geo-referencers with over 50,00 Maps geo-referenced was nominated on behalf of the volunteers by Gethen Rees, Digital Mapping Curator. It took them nearly 6 years to geo-reference over 50,000 maps, incredible and epic work that deserves a tremendous amount of recognition. Previously James Heald (2105) and Maurice Nicholson (2016)  from the volunteer mapping community have been recognised for their excellent work.

BL Labs will be donating the prize money to a Humanitarian Mapping charity.

  • In the Spotlight volunteers
    Since 2017, thousands of volunteers have helped bring the British Library's historic playbills collection to life through the In the Spotlight crowdsourcing project.

    By 'In the Spotlight volunteers' nominated by Mia Ridge, Digital Curator, Western Heritage Collections, British Library


    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

Panel comments

In the Spotlight volunteers was nominated by Mia Ridge, digital curator at the British Library on behalf of thousands of volunteers adding information to digitised historic playbills of plays and performances, with nearly a quarter of a million tasks”.

BL Labs will be donating the prize money to a charity that supports out-of-work actors who have especially been effected by the pandemic.

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BL Labs People's Choice Public Award 2020

Between 1100 (GMT) Monday 14 December 2020 to 1615 ( GMT) Tuesday 15 December 2020 an international public vote took place using Menti to decide on the overall favourite entry of all the shortlisted entrants to the BL Labs Public Awards 2020.

The results were as follows:

BL Labs People's Favourite Public Award 2020
BL Labs People's Favourite Public Award 2020 Results of Public Vote (1230 votes cast) Numbers on image correspond to the those in the table below:
Number Name of entry

Number of Public Votes

Ranking
1 Asking questions with web archives – introductory notebooks for historians 56 4
2 Mapping the Reparto de Tierras in Michoacán, Mexico (1868 - 1929) 37 5
3 Inspiring computationally-driven research with the BL’s collections:
a GLAM Notebooks approach
582 1
4 Afrobits 312 2
5 Faint Signals 18 8
6 Afro Hair and its Heritage 153 3
7 In the Spotlight volunteers 32 6
8 Flickr Geo-referencing Volunteers 4 10
8 Beyond the Rubric 32 6
10 Unlocking our Sound Heritage: The Unearthed Odessey - AWATE 14 9
  Total number of votes cast 1230  

The overall ranked list (by number of votes) was:

Rank Name of BL Labs Public Awards 2020 Entry
1 Inspiring computationally-driven research with the BL’s collections: a GLAM Notebooks approach
2 Afrobits
3 Afro Hair and its Heritage
4 Asking questions with web archives – introductory notebooks for historians
5 Mapping the Reparto de Tierras in Michoacán, Mexico (1868 - 1929)
6 In the Spotlight volunteers
6 Beyond the Rubric
8 Faint Signals
9 Unlocking our Sound Heritage: The Unearthed Odyssey - AWATE
10 Flickr Geo-referencing Volunteers

CONGRATULATIONS TO...

They are the FIRST WINNERS of the BL Labs People's Choice Public Award 2020!

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BL Labs Staff Awards 2020

The BL Labs Staff Awards were established in 2016 to highlight the exceptional work British Library staff have done with its data and / or digital collections and technology.

The 2020 British Library Labs Staff Award, now in its fifth year, gives recognition to current British Library staff who have created something brilliant using the Library's data and / or digital collections to answer and address the following questions and statements:

  • Perhaps you know of a project that developed new forms of knowledge, or an activity that delivered commercial value to the library.
  • Did the person or team create an artistic work that inspired, stimulated, amazed and provoked?
  • Do you know of a project developed by the Library where quality learning experiences were generated using the Library's digital content?
  • Have you worked on a project that used the Library's digital collections in the local community?

A panel comprised of the BL Labs Team and other British Library staff:

We received 13 entries, the most we have ever received for the Staff Awards and they are listed below:

  1. British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership watermarks project
    Digitally capturing watermarks from old manuscripts and books.

    Nominated by Sotirios Alpanis (Head of Digital Operations, BL Qatar Project) on behalf of Heather Murphy (Conservation Team Leader, BL Qatar Project), Camillie Dekeyser-Thuet (Conservator Gulf History and Arabic Science, BL Qatar Project), Matt Lee (Senior Imaging Support Technician, BL Qatar Project) and Jordi Clopes-Masjuan (Senior Imaging Technician, BL Qatar Project).


    Links: Full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  2. British Library Simulator on Bitsy
    The British Library simulator allows you to walk around the public spaces of the Library, visit a Reading Room, and see the basement (almost).

    Nominated by Ian Cooke (Head of Contemporary British Published Collections) on behalf of Giulia Carla Rossi (Curator, Digital Publications)


    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details, bitsy available here and the simulator is available here.

  3. Making Data into Sound
    Inspired by an article about sonification on the programming historian website, Anne Courtney enabled a new way of experiencing catalogue records through sound.

    Nominated by Laura Parsons (Digitisation Workflow Administrator, BL Qatar Project) on behalf of Anne Courtney (Cataloguer, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project)

    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details 

  4. Leeds Exhibition Staff Doing Digital events and projects
    In response to the pandemic British Library exhibition staff had to deliver a range of activities online, some of which were originally conceived as physical events. They also worked on commercial project commissions such as Faint Signals.

    Nominated by Elvie Thompson (Lead Learning Producer, BL North - Leeds) and Conrad Bodman (Head of Culture Programmes, BL Culture and Learning) on behalf of Kenn Taylor (Lead Culture Producer, BL North - Leeds).

    Links: Full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  5. How to make art when we're working apart
    A guide developed during lock-down to enable people to create collages using the British Library's Flickr Commons collection.

    By Hannah Nagle (Senior Imaging Support Technician, BL Qatar Project)

    Links: Full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  6. A title-level list of British, Irish, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies newspapers held by the BL
    Though the library has functions for searching the print newspaper collection, metadata was created for the newspaper titles for those who would like to get an overview of the collection or use it for statistical analysis. The data is being used by the designer of a 'history of newspapers' infographic, for the upcoming infographics exhibition to be held next year at the Library and a number of visualisations. 

    Nominated by Yann Ryan (Digital Newspaper Curator) on behalf of himself, Luke McKernan (Lead Curator News & Moving Image Collections), Stephen Lester (Curator Newspaper Collections) and Alan Danskin (Collection Metadata Standards Manager)

    Links: Full BL Labs awards' entry and further details, dataset, and press picker developed by Living with Machines is based on this work.

  7. Extracting text from Maps
    The creation and release of a dataset containing the text extracted from almost 2,000 colonial-era maps and documents, using the Google Vision API, which was enabled during the completion of a pilot course in Computing for Cultural Heritage at Birkbeck University.

    Nominated by Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Digital Curator, Asian and African Collections, the British Library on behalf of Nick Dykes (Curator for Modern Maps Collections)

    Links: Longer video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details, online map, spreadsheet, included in a paper delivered at the Royal Anthropological Institute Conference 14 - 18 September 2020, ‘Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future’ – ‘From conservation to computer vision - curating the ‘War Office Archive’ of colonial-era maps held at the British Library’

  8. The Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) Artist-in-Residence at the British Library
    Staff supporting Unlocking our Sound Heritage - Artist in Residence 2019-2020: The Unearthed Odyssey research project culminating in two performances, a genre-bending conceptual Afrofuturist album using 19 samples from the Sound Archive, three comprehensive blogs and work with three youth groups to unpack the themes and content bAWATE (Awate Suleiman - rapper and multimedia artist, England).

    Nominated by Sue Davies on behalf of Chandan Mahal (Learning Projects Manager), Andrea Zarza (Curator World & Traditional Music Collections) and Amanda House (Lead Intellectual Property Manager, Unlocking Our Sound Heritage).

    Links: Short videofull BL Labs awards' entry and further details

  9. Languid: Language Identification Project
    The addition of the language codes to 3,196,285 catalogue records using a combination of machine learning and human methods to enhance the records of items from the British Museum collection covering the period from the beginning of printing to the 1970s.

    Nominated by Alan Danskin (Collection Metadata Standards Manager) on behalf of Victoria Morris (Online Metadata Analyst, BL Collection Metadata)

    Links: Short video, longer video, full BL Labs awards' entry and Morris, Victoria  Automated Language Identification of Bibliographic Resources: Cataloging & Classification Quarterly: Vol 58, No 1 (tandfonline.com) , also available on the British Library's institutional repository

  10. Improving the cataloguing process and quality of EAP metadata through Open Refine and writing own software
    Work that enhances the catalogue process for the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) digital archive, to improve the quality of the metadata and to make the cataloguing process more efficient.

    By Graham Jevon (Endangered Archives Programme Cataloguer, BL Endangered Archives Programme)

    Links: Full BL Labs awards' entry and further details, GitHub and a second blog post

  11. Hidden world of Qatar National Library - Bitsy simulator
    Game developed using BITSY, based on the Qatar National Library in Doha. Users in the gamey have to undertake tasks such as to find a manuscript in the basement and an astrolabe with other aspects of game play to create a more immersive experience which has more intimate ties to, and features many more objects and items in the collection of the Library.

    Nominated by Ellis Meade (Senior Imaging Technician, BL Qatar Project) on behalf himself, Serim Abboushi (Arabic & English Web Content Editor, BL Qatar Project), Heather Murphy (Conservation Team Leader, BL Qatar Project), Naomi Ortega-Raventos (Content Specialist, Archivist, BL Qatar Project) and Julia Ihnatowicz (Translation Specialist, BL Qatar Project)

    Links: Full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  12. Addressing Problematic Terms in our Catalogues
    Started by colleagues on the Qatar Foundation Partnership Project, the idea was inspired by a talk by Melissa Bennett about decolonising archives and how terms used in catalogue records can be problematic. This project has analysed the terms used in cataloguing including those used when translating our catalogue records into Arabic so that they can be added to our bilingual Qatar Digital Library.

    Nominated by Laura Parsons (Digitisation Workflow Administrator, BL Qatar Project)  and Francisca Fuentes Rettig (Curator North American Publication Collections, British Library American) on behalf of British Library Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) network. The team are: Serim Abboushi (Arabic & English Web Content Editor, BL Qatar Project), Mariam Aboelezz (Translation Support Officer, BL Qatar Project), Louis Allday (Gulf History Cataloguing Manager, BL Qatar Project), Sotirios Alpanis (Head of Digital Operations, BL Qatar Project) , John Casey (Cataloguer, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), David Fitzpatrick (Content Specialist Archivist, BL Qatar Project), Susannah Gillard (Content Specialist, Archivist, BL Qatar Project), John Hayhurst (Content Specialist, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), Julia Ihnatowicz (Translation Specialist, BL Qatar Project), William Monk (Cataloguer, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), Hannah Nagle (Senior Imaging Support Technician, BL Qatar Project), Noemi Ortega-Raventos (Content Specialist, Archivist, BL Qatar Project), Francis Owtram (Content Specialist, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), Curstaidh Reid (Cataloguer, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), George Samaan (Translation Support Officer, BL Qatar Project), Tahani Shaban (Translation Specialist, BL Qatar Project), David Woodbridge (Cataloguer, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project) and Nariman Youssef (Arabic Translation Manager, BL Qatar Project)

    Links: Short video and full BL Labs awards' entry.

  13. COVID-19 materials supplied by British Library
    From the start of the pandemic and during lockdown, teams have worked hard to provide key materials for Covid-19 from the British Library On Demand collection to researches working on treatments, preventative measures and vaccines for the virus. Visit www.bl.uk/on-demand

    Nominated by Peter Chymera on behalf of Customer Services, Document Supply Managers and Retrieval Staff at the British Library

    Links: Full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

 

The winners were announced by my colleague Jas Rai, Head of People, British Library, her slide deck is available here.

Special Commendation

  • Improving the cataloguing process and quality of EAP metadata through Open Refine and writing own software
    Work that enhances the catalogue process for the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) digital archive, to improve the quality of the metadata and to make the cataloguing process more efficient.

    By Graham Jevon (Endangered Archives Programme Cataloguer, BL Endangered Archives Programme)

    Links: Full BL Labs awards' entry and further details, github and a second blog post

Panel comments

We received a number of entries which describe journeys of staff learning more about technology and then using what they learned to enable innovation in their work. We would like to give a special commendation to Nick and Graham, two members of staff who the panel felt were worthy exemplars of this.

Runners-up

Panel comments

Anne Courtney, Cataloguer of Gulf History at the British Library’s Qatar Project created a musical piece from the India Office records catalogue records. She did this by using the place names to connect with different instruments, dates in records connected to timing of the music and the how the data is related effected the interaction with the instruments.

The panel were really impressed with this very thoughtful and innovative way of discovering our collections, it was almost like leaving an acoustic memory of the people’s that these records are about.

Panel comments

Victoria Morris is an online metadata analyst in the British Library’s collection metadata team. She did some pioneering computational work using machine learning to detect missing information about the language of catalogue records.

The panel were really impressed with the innovation and the incredible impact of the work, identifying 471 languages in the records, 141 of which were not previously represented, with the addition of language codes to 3,196,285 records.

Winners

Panel comments

The simulator was created by Giulia in May 2020 using ‘Bitsy'. It has been viewed more than 5,000 times (with most use during the period when the Library was closed to the public). It has attracted press attention in the UK and in Europe. Subsequent attention has come from another national library in Europe, and also a student and librarian in the US, who is preparing a Fulbright application to study interactive storytelling and games in the UK.

Giulia followed up the Simulator by leading a 'Hack n Yack' session organised by the Digital Scholarship team on Bitsy for Library colleagues. A BL colleague has produced a similar simulator for the Qatar Digital Library inspired by Giulia's work.

This was a unanimous favourite with the judging panel. Thank you Giulia for such a fun project.

  • Addressing Problematic Terms in our Catalogues
    Started by colleagues on the Qatar Foundation Partnership Project the idea to start the work that was inspired by a talk by Melissa Bennett about decolonising the archive and how terms used in catalogue records can be problematic. This project has analysed the terms used in cataloguing including the terms used when translating our catalogue records into Arabic so that they can be added to our bilingual Qatar Digital Library.

    Nominated by Laura Parsons (Digitisation Workflow Administrator, BL Qatar Project)  and Francisca Fuentes Rettig (Curator North American Publication Collections, British Library American) on behalf of British Library Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) network. Names are: Serim Abboushi (Arabic & English Web Content Editor, BL Qatar Project), Mariam Aboelezz (Translation Support Officer, BL Qatar Project), Louis Allday (Gulf History Cataloguing Manager, BL Qatar Project), Sotirios Alpanis (Head of Digital Operations, BL Qatar Project) , John Casey (Cataloguer, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), David Fitzpatrick (Content Specialist Archivist, BL Qatar Project), Susannah Gillard (Content Specialist, Archivist, BL Qatar Project), John Hayhurst (Content Specialist, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), Julia Ihnatowicz (Translation Specialist, BL Qatar Project), William Monk (Cataloguer, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), Hannah Nagle (Senior Imaging Support Technician, BL Qatar Project), Noemi Ortega-Raventos (Content Specialist, Archivist, BL Qatar Project), Francis Owtram (Content Specialist, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), Curstaidh Reid (Cataloguer, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project), George Samaan (Translation Support Officer, BL Qatar Project), Tahani Shaban (Translation Specialist, BL Qatar Project), David Woodbridge (Cataloguer, Gulf History, BL Qatar Project) and Nariman Youssef (Arabic Translation Manager, BL Qatar Project)

    Links: Short video and full BL Labs awards' entry.

Panel comments

The second winner is from the British Library’s Qatar Foundation team. Congratulations go to: Serim Abboushi, Mariam Aboelezz, Louis Allday, Sotirios Alpanis, John Casey, David Fitzpatrick, Susannah Gillard, John Hayhurst, Julia Ihnatowicz, William Monk, Hannah Nagle, Noemi Ortega-Raventos, Francis Owtram, Curstaidh Reid, George Samaan, Tahani Shaban, David Woodbridge and Nariman Youssef  and special thanks to the BAME Staff Network.

This is incredibly important work as it is something that continues to require attention. Perhaps it’s fair to say it is now getting even more focus because of world events such as ‘Black Lives Matter’.

Congratulations to everyone, we know this work isn’t easy but it is MOST definitely needed!

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Binge-watch BL Labs 'box-sets' (YouTube Playlists)

This seasonal time in the UK often involves may of us binge watching online box sets online or on TV. If this is you, and you really want to learn more about the world of GLAM Labs, digital scholarship and the creative potential of working with our and other's digital collections and data we have organised and prepared footage from previous years' events. There are some fantastic, thought provoking and incredibly wise keynote speeches, some excellent presentations which highlight projects that are still relevant and inspiring for all of us today. You can even watch the launch of the BL Labs project almost eight years ago. 

BL_Labs_Symposium_2019Symposium
YouTube

Playlist 2019
BL_Labs_Symposium_2018Symposium
YouTube

Playlist 2018
BL_Labs_Symposium_2017Symposium
YouTube

Playlist 2017
BL_Labs_Symposium_2016Symposium
YouTube

Playlist 2016
BL_Labs_Symposium_2015Symposium
YouTube

Playlist 2015
BL Labs Symposium 2014 YouTube Playlist
Symposium
YouTube

Playlist 2014
BL_Labs_LaunchEvent2013BL Labs Launch
YouTube

Playlist 2013
Buildinglibrarylabs.jpegBuilding Library Labs
YouTube
Playlist 2018
Text-dataminingText& Data Mining
YouTube
Playlist 2015
CuriousimagesCurious Images
YouTube
Playlist 2014
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Conclusion and Season's Greetings

Winter_sceneBritish Library digitised image from page 161 of "Poetry of the year. Passages from the poets descriptive of the seasons. With twenty-two coloured illustrations from drawings by eminent artists [Edited by Joseph Cundall.]
Taken from the British Library's Flickr Commons collection.

That's a wrap from the BL Labs team for 2020, what a challenging year it has been!

We hope you find something in this post of interest that inspires you to start or continue your journey in using the British Library's (as well as other GLAM Labs and organisations) digital collections and data for an innovative project.

Looking back at nearly 8 years of working at BL Labs I am really proud of what we have achieved, let's hope 2021 will be a great year.

Seasons greetings and a Happy New Year to all, please stay safe and have a lovely and relaxing festive period with friends and family involved if possible.

Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs.

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14 December 2020

Shortlist and voting for BL Labs People's Choice: Public Awards 2020 announced! Last chance: Book BL Labs Symposium!

Posted by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs.

British Library Labs Shortlisted Entries for the Public Awards 2020
Screenshots from the 10 BL Labs shortlisted entries for the Public Awards 2020

After much deliberation and intense discussion with key people from the BL Labs Advisory board and British Library we have come up with a fantastic shortlist for the BL Labs Public Awards 2020.

The official announcement of who has been awarded prizes for the Awards in each category (Research, Artistic, Educational and Community) will take place tomorrow between 1400-1700 (GMT), Tuesday 15 December 2020 at the online BL Labs Symposium 2020. We will also announce our Staff Awards there too.

There are still a few places available - so hurry and BOOK NOW to find out if the project you voted for won! Also, learn more about some of the amazing projects that were submitted this year and listen and be inspired by our fantastic range of speakers in our packed programme.

In this strange, difficult and remarkable pandemic year, we decided to do something really special.

We we want you, the public, to choose which shortlisted entry will be crowned overall the 'BL Labs People's Choice for the Public Awards 2020'. It's going to be difficult as the projects this year are so diverse and difficult to compare. Also, you only have today and tomorrow to decide (voting will close around 1615 GMT tomorrow, Tuesday 15 December 2020).

The winner will be announced near the end of the BL Labs Symposium 2020 tomorrow, Tuesday 15 December 2020, just before 1700 GMT.

How to vote for the BL Labs People's Choice for the Public Awards 2020?

It's really simple:

  1. Read the descriptions below and follow the links to learn more about each entry.
  2. Vote for your favourite (you can only chose one!) using our VOTING FORM which is now live.
  3. You will be asked if you wish to have the results emailed to you after you have voted. If you choose this option, all you will be able to see are the number of people who have voted.
  4. The form will remain open from 1100 GMT Monday 14 December to 1615 GMT Tuesday 15 December 2020 (that's just over 30 hours).
  5. The winner will be announced around 1655 GMT tomorrow on 15 December 2020 near the end this year's online BL Labs Symposium 2020.

Only have 5 minutes to look through the entries and vote?

No problem! We have created a BL Labs Public Awards YouTube shortlist 2020 which contains ten 30-second promotional videos for each shortlisted entry to give you their 'essence'. It's just over 5 minutes and then you can VOTE!

You can also ownload a .zip file with all the submissions for this year's BL Labs Public Awards 2020 (all entries) if you prefer.

The shortlisted entries for the BL Labs Public Awards 2020 this year are (in alphabetical title order):

  1. Afrobits
    An interactive installation of African music and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade .
    by Javier Pereda (Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design and Illustration and Researcher in the Experimental Technologies Lab, Liverpool John Moores University), Patricia Murrieta Flores (Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities, Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Hub at Lancaster University), Nicholas Radburn (Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World 1500 – 1800, Co-Editor of the Slave Voyages Research Project, Lancaster University), Lois South (History Graduate, Liverpool John Moores University) and Christian Monaghan, Graphic Design and Illustration Graduate, Liverpool John Moores University.

    Links: Short video, longer video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  2. Afro Hair And Its Heritage
    A celebration of Black Heritage through Black Afro Hair.
    by Roslyn Henry (self-taught surface pattern designer, from Les Belles Bêtes, France)

    Links: Short video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details(1) and (2)

  3. Asking questions with web archives – introductory notebooks for historians
    16 Jupyter notebooks that demonstrate how specific historical research questions can be explored by analysing data from web archives.
    by Tim Sherratt (Associate Professor of Digital Heritage at the University of Canberra and founder and creator of the GLAM workbench), Andrew Jackson (Technical Lead - UK Web Archive, British Library), Alex Osborne (Technical Lead Australian Web Archive - National Library of Australia) and Ben O’Brien (Technical Lead New Zealand Web Archive - National Library of New Zealand)

    Links: Short video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  4. Beyond the Rubric: Collaborating with the Cultural Heritage Sector in Higher Education Teaching and Research
    A project-based, research-led collaboration between the British Library and students of the Centre for Digital Humanities Research at the Australian National University.
    by Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller (Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)

    Links: Short video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details

  5. Faint Signals
    Interactive artwork that generates an imagined Yorkshire forest, densely populated with sounds of nature from the British Library's archive.
    by the Invisible Flock team who are Ben Eaton (Technical Director), Victoria Pratt (Creative Director),  Klavs Kurpnieks (Studio Manager), Catherine Baxendale (Executive Producer), Amy Balderston (General Manager) and Simon Fletcher (Interactions Engineer).

    Links: Short video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  6. Flickr Georeferencing completed
    Volunteer georeferencers have added coordinates to all the images of over 50,000 maps from the British Library's Flickr Commons site.
    by 'Volunteer geo-referencers' nominated by Gethen Rees, Digital Mapping Curator, British Library

    Links: Short video, Full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  7. Inspiring computationally-driven research with the BL’s collections: a GLAM Notebooks approach
    Enabling cultural heritage institutions and (digital) humanities researchers to experiment with Collections as Data and GLAM notebooks by showcasing practical implementations from a wide range of GLAM institutions and digital collections. 
    by Gustavo Candela, Pilar Escobar, María Dolores Sáez and Manuel Marco-Such  from the Research Libraries Team, Department of Software and Computing Systems, the University of Alicante, Spain

    Links: Short video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  8. In the Spotlight volunteers
    Since 2017, thousands of volunteers have helped bring the British Library's historic playbills collection to life through the In the Spotlight crowdsourcing project.
    by 'In the Spotlight volunteers' nominated by Mia Ridge, Digital Curator, Western Heritage Collections, British Library

    Links: Short video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  9. Mapping the Reparto de Tierras in Michoacán, Mexico (1868 - 1929)
    Research in 19th-century Mexican sources and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based approaches underpinning the creation of an interactive web map that enables users to spatially explore the British Library's recently digitized Libros de Hijuelas collection.
    by John Erard (Undergraduate researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, USA).

    Links: Short video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details.

  10. Unlocking our Sound Heritage - Artist in Residence 2019-2020: The Unearthed Odyssey
    Research project culminating in two performances, a genre-bending conceptual Afrofuturist album using 19 samples from the Sound Archive, three comprehensive blogs and work with three youth groups to unpack the themes and content.
    by AWATE (Awate Suleiman - rapper and multimedia artist, England)

    Links: Short video, full BL Labs awards' entry and further details

What happens to the projects not shortlisted?

Though we have criteria to decide which projects should be shortlisted it was still incredibly difficult to choose which ones should be. Judging can be so subjective! Remember it's a point in time with a specific group of people in a particular mood and set of lenses. At a different time, with another group of people I am sure they would probably come up with another selection.

So if you were not chosen this year, please do not be disheartened. The whole point of the BL Labs Awards is to shine a light and showcase uses of our digital collections through innovative projects and activities. These projects have often gone on to be developed further such as someone happened to have come across it and connected with individuals involved and ended up collaborating with them. Many projects have also inspired others to develop their own using the British Library's as well as other institution's cultural heritage digitised and born digital collections.

Details of all the projects entered this year are contained in the BL Labs Digital Projects Archive.

BL Labs can promote your work through our various communication channels (if we haven't already!). Who knows where that might lead? For some of these entrants, I would definitely recommend that they re-submit next year when the projects have been developed further and have had a chance to have further impact.

So for now, a quick thank you to the following people who took the time enter (we have also provided links for those who would like to read further about these entries), we really, really appreciate it:

  1. Drawings inspired by the British Library's Sound Archive of Wildlife Recordings by Viv Youell (England)
  2. Curatr: A Data Interface for the British Library Nineteenth Century Corpus by University College Dublin's Insight team and Centre for Cultural Analytics, Ireland
  3. Reconstructing Early Circus: Entertainments at Astley’s Amphitheatre, 1768-1833 by Leith Davis, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
  4. Surfacing the impact of doctoral research: working with the EThOS collection by Catherine Montgomery, Craig Stewart, Tom Roberts, Sharon Riddle and Jinjie Huang from Durham University, England
  5. Baking in Better Catalogue Data by Sara Wingate Gray, University College London, England
  6. The Samtla (Search And Mining Tools for Labelling Archives) holographic search and browsing interface for cultural heritage photogrammetry models by Martyn Harris (Birkbeck) and Mark Levene (University College London), England
  7. Visualizing Space by Tara McDarby, United Kingdom
  8. The Interpreter and You Are Not An Island by Noriko Okaku, England (2 entries)
  9. Librorum: the British Library Edition by Janet Luk (Australian National University (ANU), Man-Ting Hsu (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (Canberra, Australia), Billy Nam Cheng (ANU), Jingyi Lai (Haiwan Middle School (Shenzhen, China), Mengfei Liu (Access Canberra (Canberra, Australia) and Xiaohan Jiang (China Maritime Museum (Shanghai, China))
  10. BL Illuminated Glyphs CAPS: Typographic System of Illuminated Manuscript Letterings by Michelle Devlin , England

I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow at the BL Labs Awards Symposium 2020 and seasons greetings to you all, Mahendra.

26 November 2020

Using British Library Cultural Heritage Data for a Digital Humanities Research Course at the Australian National University

Posted on behalf of Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Digital Humanities Research, Australian National University by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs.

The teaching philosophy and pedagogy of the Centre for Digital Humanities Research (CDHR) at the Australian National University (ANU) focus on research-fuelled, practice-led, object-orientated learning. We value collaboration, experimentation, and individual growth, rather than adhering to standardised evaluation matrix of exams or essays. Instead, students enrolled in jointly-taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses are given a task: to innovate at the intersection of digital technologies and cultural heritage sector institutions. They are given a great degree of autonomy, and are trusted to deliver. Their aim is to create digital prototypes, which open up GLAM sector material to a new audience.

HUMN2001: Digital Humanities Theories and Projects, and its postgraduate equivalent HUMN6001 are core courses for the programs delivered from the CDHR. HUMN2001 is a compulsory course for both the Minor and the Major in Digital Humanities for the Bachelor of Arts; HUMN6001 is a core, compulsory course in the Masters of Digital Humanities and Public Culture. Initially the course structure was quite different: experts would be invited to guest lecture on their Digital Humanities projects, and the students were tasked with carrying out critical evaluations of digital resources of various kinds. What quickly became apparent, was that without experience of digital projects, the students struggled to meaningfully and thoughtfully evaluate the projects they encountered. Many focused exclusively on the user-interface; too often critical factors like funding sources were ignored; the critical evaluative context in which the students operated was greatly skewed by their experiences of tools such as Google and platforms such as Facebook.

The solution to the problem became clear - students would have to experience the process of developing digital projects themselves before they could reasonably be expected to evaluate those of others. This revelation brought on a paradigm shift in the way in which the CDHR engages with students, projects, and their cultural heritage sector collaborators.

In 2018, we reached out to colleagues at the ANU for small-scale projects for the students to complete. The chosen project was the digitisation and the creation of metadata records for a collection of glass slides that form part of the Heritage in the Limelight project. The enthusiasm, diligence, and care that the students applied to working with this external dataset (external only to the course, since this was an ANU-internal project) gave us confidence to pursue collaborations outside of our own institution. In Semester 1 of 2019, Dr Katrina Grant’s course HUMN3001/6003: Digital Humanities Methods and Practices ran in collaboration with the National Museum of Australia (NMA) to almost unforeseeable success: the NMA granted five of the top students a one-off stipend of $1,000 each, and continued working with the students on their projects, which were then added to the NMA’s Defining Moments Digital Classroom, launched in November 2020. This collaboration was featured in a piece in the ANU Reporter, the University’s internal circular. 

Encouraged by the success of Dr Grant’s course, and presented with a serendipitous opportunity to meet up at the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH) conference in 2018 where he was giving the keynote, I reached out to Mahendra Mahey to propose a similar collaboration. In Semester 2, 2019 (July to November), HUMN2001/6001 ran in collaboration with the British Library. 

Our experiences of working with students and cultural heritage institutions in the earlier semester had highlighted some important heuristics. As a result, the delivery of HUMN2001/6001 in 2019 was much more structured than that of HUMN3001/6003 (which had offered the students more freedom and opportunity for independent research). Rather than focus on a theoretical framework per se, HUMN2001/6001 focused on the provision of transferable skills that improved the delivery and reporting of the projects, and could be cited directly in future employment opportunities as a skills-base. These included project planning and time management (such as Gantt charts and SCRUM as a form of agile project management), and each project was to be completed in groups.

The demographic set up of each group had to follow three immutable rules:

  • The first, was that each team had to be interdisciplinary, with students from more than one degree program.
  • Second, the groups had to be multilingual, and not each member of the group could have the same first language, or be monolingual in the same language.
  • Third, was that the group had to represent more than one gender.

Although not all groups strictly implemented these rules, the ones that did benefitted from the diversity and critical lens afforded by this richness of perspective to result in the top projects.

Three examples that best showcase the diversity (and the creative genius!) of these groups and their approach to the British Library’s collection include a virtual reality (VR) concert hall, a Choose-You-Own-Adventure-Game travelling through Medieval manuscripts, and an interactive treasure hunt mobile app.

Examples of student projects

(VR)2 : Virtuoso Rachmaninoff in Virtual Reality

Research Team: Angus Harden, Noppakao (Angel) Leelasorn, Mandy McLean, Jeremy Platt, and Rachel Watson

Fig. 1 Angel Leelasorn testing out (VR)2
Figure 1: Angel Leelasorn testing out (VR)2
Figure 2: Snapshots documenting the construction of (VR)2
Figure 2: Snapshots documenting the construction of (VR)2

This project is a VR experience of the grand auditorium of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. It has an audio accompaniment of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor, Op.3, No.2, the score for which forms part of the British Library’s collection. Reflective of the personal experiences of some of the group members, the project was designed to increase awareness of mental health, and throughout the experience the user can encounter notes written by Rachmaninoff during bouts of depression. The sense of isolation is achieved by the melody playing in an empty auditorium. 

The VR experience was built using Autodesk Maya and Unreal Engine 4. The music was produced  using midi data, with each note individually entered into Logic Pro X, and finally played through Addictive Keys Studio Grand virtual instrument.

The project is available through a website with a disclosure, and links to various mental health helplines, accessible at: https://virtuosorachmaninoff.wixsite.com/vrsquared

Fantastic Bestiary

Research Team: Jared Auer, Victoria (Vick) Gwyn, Thomas Larkin, Mary (May) Poole, Wen (Raven) Ren, Ruixue (Rachel) Wu, Qian (Ariel) Zhang

Fig. 3 Homepage of A Fantastic Bestiary
Figure 3:  Homepage of A Fantastic Bestiary

This project is a bilingual Choose-Your-Own-Adventure hypertext game that engages with the Medieval manuscripts (such as Royal MS 12 C. xix. Folios 12v-13, based off the Greek Physiologus and the Etymologiae of St. Isidore of Seville) collection at the British Library, first discovered through the Turning the Pages digital feature. The project workflow included design and background research, resource development, narrative writing, animation, translation, audio recording, and web development. Not only does it open up the Medieval manuscripts to the public in an engaging and innovative way through five fully developed narratives (~2,000-3,000 words each), all the content is also available in Mandarin Chinese.

The team used a plethora of different tools, including Adobe Animate, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Audition and Audacity. The website was developed using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the Microsoft Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment

The project is accessible at: https://thomaslarkin7.github.io/hypertextStory/

ActionBound

Research Team: Adriano Carvalho-Mora, Conor Francis Flannery, Dion Tan, Emily Swan

Fig 4 (Left)Testing the app at the Australian National Botanical Gardens, (Middle) An example of one of the tasks to complete in ActionBound (Right) Example of sound file from the British Library (a dingo)
Figure 4: (Left) Testing the app at the Australian National Botanical Gardens, (Middle) An example of one of the tasks to complete in ActionBound (Right) Example of sound file from the British Library (a dingo)

This project is a mobile application, designed as a location-based authoring tool inspired by the Pokemon Go! augmented reality mobile game. This educational scavenger-hunt aims to educate players about endangered animals. Using sounds of endangered or extinct animals from the British Library’s collection, but geo-locating the app at the Australian National Botanical Gardens, this project is a perfect manifestation of truly global information sharing and enrichment.

The team used a range of available tools and technologies to build this Serious Game or Game-With-A-Purpose. These include GPS and other geo-locating (and geo-caching), they created QR codes to be scanned during the hunt, locations are mapped using Open Street Map

The app can be downloaded from: https://en.actionbound.com/bound/BotanicGardensExtinctionHunt

Course Assessment

Such a diverse and dynamic learning environment presents some pedagogical challenges and required a new approach to student evaluation and assessment. The obvious question here is how to fairly, objectively, and comprehensively grade such vastly different projects? Especially since not only do they differ in both methodology and data, but also in the existing level of skills within the group. The approach I took for the grading of these assignments is one that I believe will have longevity and to some extent scalability. Indeed, I have successfully applied the same rubric in the evaluation of similarly diverse projects created for the course in 2020, when run in collaboration with the National Film and Sound Archives of Australia

The assessment rubric for this course awards students on two axis: ambition and completeness. This means that projects that were not quite completed due to their scale or complexity are awarded for the vision, and the willingness of the students to push boundaries, do new things, and take on a challenge. The grading system allows for four possible outcomes: a High Distinction (for 80% or higher), Distinction (70-79%), Credit (60-69%), and Pass (50-59%). Projects which are ambitious and completed to a significant extent land in the 80s; projects that are either ambitious but not fully developed, or relatively simple but completed receive marks in the 70s; those that very literally engaged with the material, implemented a technologically straightforward solution (such as building a website using WordPress or Wix, or using one of the suite of tools from Northwestern University’s Knightlab) were awarded marks in the 60s. Students were also rewarded for engaging with tools and technologies they had no prior knowledge of. Furthermore, in week 10 of a 12 week course, we ran a Digital Humanities Expo! Event, in which the students showcased their projects and received user-feedback from staff and students at the ANU. Students able to factor these evaluations into their final project exegeses were also rewarded by the marking scheme.

Notably, the vast majority of the students completed the course with marks 70 or higher (in the two top career brackets). Undoubtedly, the unconventional nature of the course is one of its greatest assets. Engaging with a genuine cultural heritage institution acted as motivation for the students. The autonomy and trust placed in them was empowering. The freedom to pursue the projects that they felt best reflected their passions, interests in response to a national collection of international fame resulted, almost invariably, in the students rising to the challenge and even exceeding expectations.

This was a learning experience beyond the rubric. To succeed students had to develop the transferable skills of project-planning, time-management and client interaction that would support a future employment portfolio. The most successful groups were also the most diverse groups. Combining voices from different degree programs, languages, cultures, genders, and interests helped promote internal critical evaluations throughout the design process, and helped the students engage with the materials, the projects, and each other in a more thoughtful way.

Two groups discussing their projects with Mahendra Mahey
Figure 5: Two groups discussing their projects with Mahendra Mahey
Figure 6 : National Museum of Australia curator Dr Lily Withycombe user-testing a digital project built using British Library data, 2019.
Figure 6: National Museum of Australia curator Dr Lily Withycombe user-testing a digital project built using British Library data, 2019.
User-testing feedback! Staff and students came to see the projects and support our students in the Digital Humanities Expo in 2019.
Figure 7: User-testing feedback! Staff and students came to see the projects and support our students in the Digital Humanities Expo in 2019.

Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller Biography

Dr. Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller
Dr. Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller

Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities at the Australian National University. She examines the potential of computational tools and digital technologies to support and diversify scholarship in the Humanities. Her publications cover the use of Linked Open Data with musicological information, library metadata, the narrative in ancient Mesopotamian literary compositions, and the role of gamification and informal online environments in education. She has created 3D digital models of cuneiform tables, carved boab nuts, animal skulls, and the Black Rod of the Australian Senate. She is a British Library Labs Researcher in Residence and a Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute, UK; an eResearch South Australia (eRSA) HASS DEVL (Humanities Arts and Social Sciences Data Enhanced Virtual Laboratory) Champion; an iSchool Research Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (2019 - 2021), a member of the Australian Government Linked Data Working Group; and, since September 2020 has been a member of the Territory Records Advisory Council for the Australian Capital Territory Government.

BL Labs Public Awards 2020 - REMINDER - Entries close NOON (GMT) 30 November 2020

Inspired by this work that uses the British Library's digitised collections? Have you done something innovative using the British Library's digital collections and data? Why not consider entering your work for a BL Labs Public Award 2020 and win fame, glory and even a bit of money?

This year's public awards 2020 are open for submission, the deadline for entry is NOON (GMT) Monday 30 November 2020

Whilst we welcome projects on any use of our digital collections and data (especially in research, artistic, educational and community categories), we are particularly interested in entries in our public awards that have focused on anti-racist work, about the pandemic or that are using computational methods such as the use of Jupyter Notebooks.

Work will be showcased at the online BL Labs Annual Symposium between 1400 - 1700 on Tuesday 15 December, for more information and a booking form please visit the BL Labs Symposium 2020 webpage.

25 November 2020

Early Circus in London: Astley's Amphitheatre by Professor Leith Davis

Posted on behalf of Professor Leith Davis at Simon Fraser University, British Colombia, Canada by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs.

Astley-archive-Th.Cts.35
Picture of cutting taken from the Astley's newspaper clippings archive Th.Cts.35 (held at the British Library)

What do you think of when you hear the word “circus”? Lions, tigers, elephants? Ringmasters in coat-tails? Trapeze artists? In fact, most of the images that we commonly associate with circus derive from nineteenth-century examples of the genre. Circus when it first started out in the late eighteenth century was a different kind of entertainment altogether. Yes, there were animal acts, including equestrian riding stunts, and there were also acrobatics. But early circus also included automatons and air balloons, pantomime and fireworks, musical acts and re-enactments of events like the storming of the Bastille. In short, it was a microcosm of the Georgian world which served to re-present important political and cultural activities by re-mixing them with varieties of astonishing physical entertainments.

Ackermann-rudolph-microcosm-083720
Astley's Amphitheatre from Microcosm of London
Image taken from the British Library Archive

Unfortunately, partially as a result of the overpowering influence of the lions and tigers and ringmasters, and partially as a result of its having fallen through the cracks between academic disciplinary divisions, early circus has been largely forgotten.

The database that I created, “Reconstructing Early Circus: Entertainments at Astley’s Amphitheatre, 1768-1833” (https://dhil.lib.sfu.ca/circus/), based on materials held by the British Library, aims to bring early circus back from offstage and to connect the ephemeral traces of this eighteenth-century entertainment with the concerns of our contemporary age.

Philip-Astley
Phillip Astley - Image Copyright 
National Portrait Gallery

The man credited with “inventing” the form of entertainment known now as circus was Philip Astley. Astley was certainly not the first person to perform popular equestrian entertainments for money, but he is acknowledged to have been the first person to have had the idea of using an enclosed space where he could present his equestrian shows to a paying audience. Over the years, Astley’s Amphitheatre and Riding School evolved to include both a ring and a stage. Astley was an astute businessman and was able to expand his enterprise to include circuses in Dublin and Paris. His success also encouraged other entertainment entrepreneurs to try their hand at the circus business. Sites of entertainment similar to Astley’s sprang up within London and other locations in the British archipelago as well as in Europe and North America, including Jones’s Equestrian Amphitheatre in Whitechapel (1786), Swan’s Amphitheatre in Birmingham (1787), the Edinburgh Equestrian Circus (1790), Ricketts's Equestrian Pantheon in Boston (1794) and Montreal (1797), and the Royal Circus, Equestrian and Philharmonic Academy in London (1782). Circus was not just as a type of entertainment in the metropolis; it was also a transnational phenomenon.

Pony race
Poney Race at Astley's Amphitheatre, image from V&A Museum

I drew the data for  “Reconstructing Early Circus” from the British Library’s “Astley’s Cuttings From Newspapers” (Th. Cts. 35-37). This source consists of three volumes of close to 3,000 newspaper advertisements of entertainments featured at Astley’s from 1768 to 1833, along with a few manuscript materials and a lock of Astley’s daughter’s hair. The clippings were collected by the theatre manager, James Winston, for a history of theatre which he never published. Working with my research assistant, Emma Pink, I photographed each of the clippings from the BL volumes in the reading room and got 4 undergraduate students to transcribe them. Then I worked with the personnel at Simon Fraser University’s Digital Humanities Research Lab to create the website. Users can browse through the sixty-year history of Astley’s or, using the search function, they can identify the frequency of particular acts or performers, for example. The materials represent a rich treasure trove for scholars of: Romantic-era cultural and media studies; British history; economic and business history; performance studies; fine arts; and cultural memory studies. 

As I continue to expand and improve on the site, I hope to use my database to explore connections between early circus and other popular entertainments of the day as well as to expand the site to examine circus locations in transatlantic locations. 

Examining the Astley archives allows us to learn more about leisure in the long eighteenth century as well as about the connections between popular entertainment and political and social concerns in Georgian times, and, by extension, in our own era. Lions and tigers and ringmasters you won’t find here, but check out the “little Learned Military Horse,” the trained bees, and, of course, the equestrian feats of Astley himself for more insight into this neglected popular entertainment from 200 years ago. 

(See also Leith Davis. "Between Archive and Repertoire: Astley's Amphitheatre, Early Circus, and Romantic-Era Song Culture." Studies in Romanticism 58, no. 4 (2019): 451-79).

Leith-davis
Leith Davis, Professor of English at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada

Leith Davis is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada where she researches and teaches eighteenth-century literature and media history. She is the author of Acts of Union: Scotland and the Negotiation of the British Nation (Stanford UP, 1998) and Music, Postcolonialism and Gender: The Construction of Irish Identity, 1724-1874 (Notre Dame UP, 2005) as well as co-editor of Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004) and Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture (Ashgate, 2012). She is currently completing a monograph entitled Mediating Cultural Memory in Britain and Ireland, 1688-1745 which explores sites of cultural memory in the British archipelago within the context of the shifting media ecology of the eighteenth century.

BL Labs Public Awards 2020 - REMINDER - Entries close NOON (GMT) 30 November 2020

Inspired by this work that uses the British Library's digital archived cuttings? Have you done something innovative using the British Library's digital collections and data? Why not consider entering your work for a BL Labs Public Award 2020 and win fame, glory and even a bit of money?

This year's public awards 2020 are open for submission, the deadline for entry is NOON (GMT) Monday 30 November 2020

Whilst we welcome projects on any use of our digital collections and data (especially in research, artistic, educational and community categories), we are particularly interested in entries in our public awards that have focused on anti-racist work, about the pandemic or that are using computational methods such as the use of Jupyter Notebooks.

Work will be showcased at the online BL Labs Annual Symposium between 1400 - 1700 on Tuesday 15 December, for more information and a booking form please visit the BL Labs Symposium 2020 webpage.

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