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Sharing and SerendipityThe bridges we build make the
difference between ‘use’ and ‘re-use’
Ben O’Steen, British Library Labs @benosteen
British Library Labs
funded by the Andrew K. Mellon foundation (2013 - …)
⇒ Mahendra Mahey and Ben O’Steen
Experimenting for the sake of the researcher:
British Library Labs - http://labs.bl.uk (embedded in the ‘Digital Scholarship’ department.)
“Create, explore and foster new and innovative ways to work with the British Library’s existing digital content.”*
(*My paraphrasing)
David Foster Wallace, on Ambition:
“You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous, because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.
Because doing anything results in— It’s actually kind of tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is.”- As told to Leonard Lopate on WNYC on March 4, 1996.
(emphasis my own)http://blankonblank.org/interviews/david-foster-wallace-on-ambition/
The unifying theme to (pretty much) all the requests*:
* before BL Labs
The unifying theme to (pretty much) all the requests:
Give me EVERYTHING!
Why?“Can’t they just find the things they want
through the catalogue?”
1. If they knew which bits of data were necessary,
they would already know the answers.
“I am interested in
travel accounts in
Europe during the 19th Century”
2. If a conventional search interface worked, they wouldn’t be asking.
Library interfaces presuppose that the person using them:- knows the name of the thing they need,- wants a single thing at a time,- share the library’s views on characterising
information,- and most importantly, the ‘person’ using
them is an actual person, not a machine
“16 Sad Women”
2013 Competition winnershttp://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs
Pieter Francois
Data-mining
Research using a normal catalogue interface is like finding needles in a haystack.
Data-mining is like throwing a huge magnet in and seeing what sticks.
Bulk access to all data is necessary for new forms of research to emerge.
How has the depiction of faces changed in books over the 19th Century?
Or, how well does modern photographic face detection routines work on 19th
Century illustrations?
Success? Not really.
Many more female faces were found than male.
This did not mean that there are more images of women in the books than men!
19C depictions of faces
• Often drawn more symmetrically - male faces were more likely to be exaggerated.
• Depiction is typically 'clean' and posed• Fashion: beards, spectacles and hats - different
to the modern photographic training data
There was something else though...
People on their way past would occasionally pause and look over my shoulder.
Every day it dug up illustrations that surprised me and the team around me.
So… I wondered if anyone else might be surprised and intrigued by them too?http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/archive
Impact?
Hard to measure but:
- 20 million hits on average every month, over 230 million in 13 months.
- Over 150,000 tags added.- Hundreds of contributors.- Iterative crowdsourcing is ongoing.
- https://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/Commons:
British_Library/Mechanical_Curator_collection/map_tag_status
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/sound-and-vision/2014/10/inspired-by-flickr-air.html
David Normalhttp://www.davidnormal.com/
Burning Man Festival
David Normal created light boxes around theBurning man, using the British Library’s Flickr Images
Burning Man Festival
Gothic theme, tie-in with the Library's exhibitionTerror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination 3 October 2014 - 20 January 2015
• Fonthill AbbeyHome of William Beckford, author of Vathek
• Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death
• Whitby and its association with Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula
Off the Map 2014
Off the Map 2014 Winners
•2014 winning team: Gothulus RiftUniversity of South Wales
•Created a Fonthill Abbey inspired game called Nix using Oculus Rift
•Blog: http://nixgamedevblog.blogspot.co.uk
•YouTube flythrough: http://youtu.be/8ESieZO4VHw
Off the Map 2015•Alice’s Adventures Off the Map
•Part of the British Library's celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland
•http://gamecity.org/alices-adventures-off-the-map/
British Library Labs Competitions
http://labs.bl.uk/British+Library+Labs+Competition+2015
(Unofficial descriptions of the two:“Tell us your ideas”and“Show us what you have done”)
My contact details:
[email protected]@benosteen
Links:http://labs.bl.ukhttp://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com https://flickr.com/photos/britishlibraryhttps://github.com/bl-labshttp://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-first-steps.html \