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Digital Scholarship Training @ British Library
Aquiles Alencar-BraynerDigital Curator #bldigital
www.bl.uk 2
The British Library is the national library of the UK.
By law we receive a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland.
If you saw 5 items a day it would take you 80,000 years to see the whole collection
www.bl.uk 3
Over 150 Million items are stored in London and in Yorkshire
But…as we digitise and collect born-digital, the Library is becoming as much a place full of data as it is a place full of physical stuff, and there is a growing community of users who see it that way.
http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/quickinfo/facts/
www.bl.uk 4
Meet the Digital Research Team
The Digital Research Team is a cross-disciplinary mix of curators, researchers, librarians and technologists supporting the creation and innovative use of British Library's digital collections.
www.bl.uk 5
What we do…
• We work with staff and researchers operating at the intersection of academic research, cultural heritage and technology to support new ways of exploring and accessing our collections through:
– Getting content in digital form and online– Collaborative projects– Offering digital research support and guidance– Running events, competitions, and awards (BL Labs)
http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship
www.bl.uk 6
Encoded in the Job Description
• To encourage, support and assist curators in Collection areas to realise their vision of integrating a variety of formats into a seamless research experience or of digitising particular parts of the Library’s collections
• To train staff throughout the Library in the opportunities for and practices of digital scholarship.
www.bl.uk 7
How to define Digital Scholarship?
Using computational methods either to answer existing research questions or to challenge existing theoretical paradigms….
(list courses here?)
Geotagging
Data Visualisation
Data Mining
Georeferencing
Digital MappingCrowdsourcing
Text mining
Collaboration
www.bl.uk 8
Example: Political Meetings MapperHow many Chartists meetings were held from 1838 to 1850 and where were they held?
5,519 meetings discovered in 462 towns and villages across the UK!
Sources:• BL digitized 19th century
newspapers
• BL geo-referenced historic maps
• BL playbills collection
“I was able to do in minutes with a python code what I’d spent the last ten years trying to do by hand!”
-Dr. Katrina Navickas, BL Labs Winner 2015
www.bl.uk 9
The Training Programme
The Digital Scholarship Training Programme is an internal staff training initiative by the Digital Curator team that launched in November 2012.
Developed 19 bespoke courses to help us situate our collections and expertise in the realm of digital research, exploring opportunities and challenges.
Delivered 88 courses to over 400 staff members so far!
www.bl.uk 10
Some courses
• 101 What is Digital Scholarship? • 103 Digitisation at British Library • 104 Communicating our collections online• 105 Crowdsourcing in Libraries, Museums and Cultural Heritage Institutions• 107 Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly Research• and Digital Mapping • 109 Information Integration: Mash-ups, API’s and The Semantic Web• 110 Managing digital research information• 114 Foundations in working with Digital Objects: From Images to A/V• 115 Metadata for Electronic Resources: Dublin Core, METS, MODS, RDF, XML• 118 Cleaning up Data• 119 Programming in Libraries
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• Staff across all collection areas are familiar and conversant with the foundational concepts, methods and tools of digital scholarship.
• Staff are empowered to innovate.
• Collaborative digital initiatives flourish across subject areas within the Library as well as externally.
• Our internal capacity for training and skill-sharing in digital scholarship are a shared responsibility across the Library.
Training programme: goals
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• Hands-on, practical exercises
• Time to explore innovative digital projects
• Trying new tools, particularly with BL or similar collections
• The expertise and enthusiasm of instructors
• Meeting colleagues and learning about BL projects
Participants most appreciated...
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• Case studies / real world examples help
• Articulate learning outcomes, expected results for exercises
• Provide clear, printable instructions
• No more than 15 people in hands-on courses
• Allow time for all to complete exercises
• Build in optional activities for advanced participants
Practical Best Practices/Tips Gleaned
www.bl.uk 14
Inspired…Big Data History of Music
How can vast amounts of bibliographic data held by research libraries be unlocked for music researchers to analyse?
Can this data be interrogated in ways that challenge the traditional narratives of music history?
Analyses and visualisations exposed previously uncharted patterns in the history of music, for instance the rise and fall of music printing in 16th- and 17th-century Europe (huge dips in output in Venice were down to plague and war).
www.bl.uk 15
2016/2017 Priorities courses will reflect
• Digitisation pipeline - keen to understand and help improve
• Crowdsourcing support – start-up, design & promotion
• OCR/HTR – development and application (transcription)
• Digital publishing – interim, strategic and external platforms
• Data wrangling – support for retro conversion
• Semantic enrichment - TEI and other mark-up
• Programming/scripting – tips for making work easier
• Digital Scholarship – better understand landscape to reach new users
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Opportunities for improvements:
• Reaching staff who are keen and could most make use of the information but have not yet engaged
• Providing guidance and support to staff who are looking to implement what they have learned
• Addressing more explicitly the challenges and opportunities for doing digital research with complex collection materials, particularly our vast non-Western materials
www.bl.uk 17
Reaching staff who have not yet engaged
• Offer shorter (One/Two hour) teasers for popular subjects
• Describe courses so they more clearly articulate relevance to daily context
• Offer informal drop-in Hack & Yack Style events
• Arrange DH talks relevant to collection area, followed by how-to/hands on workshops
• Continuously and closely engage with our collection areas to ensure courses are always filling a need/relevant.
www.bl.uk 18
Guidance and Support for Implementation
• Digital Curators now represented on all major Infrastructure Projects
• Getting started guides on internal wiki
• Monthly Hack and Yack
• Monthly Digital Scholarship Reading Group
www.bl.uk 19
Bettering our understanding of DH opportunities in non-Western contexts
• Digital Curators are being hired specifically as part of new digitisation projects
• Hebrew Manuscripts• Two Centuries of Indian Print
• Look to appoint folks for brief periods of time to investigate and report on priority
content areas • PhD Placement: Profiling the Digital Humanities Landscape in
China• This information will feed back into development of courses for
future.
www.bl.uk 20
Digital Curators in Digitisation Projects
Digital Curator, Hebrew Manuscripts, exploring and experimenting with different types of digital tools on the Hebrew collection, e.g. 3D modelling, annotations, data visualisations, image processing, spatial representation and others.
Digital Curator, Two Centuries Indian Print, exploring OCR technologies for Bengali Print and digital research approaches to Book History.
www.bl.uk 21
Identify key individuals, institutions, and major centres of activity in this area, both in East Asia and globally
Identify notable and representative Digital Humanities projects and research being undertaken in this area
Articulate how cultural /societal/ technological/ governmental policies may be having an impact on the adoption of computational methods in humanistic studies in East Asia
Suggest where possible opportunities/barriers and current trends in this area may lie, particularly in light of the Library’s services and collections.
PhD Placement: Profiling the Digital Humanities Landscape in China
www.bl.uk 22
Getting in touch
Web: http://www.bl.uk/subjects/digital-scholarship
Blog: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/
Email: [email protected]
@BL_DigiSchol #bldigital
