bl labs presentation at liverpool john moores university

1 @BL_Labs @BL_DigiSchol #bldigital https://goo.gl/Mj9DWR

British Library LabsWhat is British Library Labs and what have we learned over the last four years?Mahendra Mahey

1315 – 1400, 22 March 2017Learning the Lessons of working with the British Library’s Digital Content and Data for your research(History UK with Liverpool John Moores University)

https://goo.gl/Mj9DWR


The British Library

Inside the British LibrarySpace for 1200 readers, around 400,000 visitors per year

Uses low oxygen and robotsReading room and delivery to London

Document Supply and Storage at Boston Spa

Stockton-on-TeesAuthor right to payment each time their books

are borrowed from public libraries.

St Pancras, London, UKMany books are stored 4 stories below the buildingLegal Deposit Library – Reference only

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8393710.stm


Living Knowledge Vision (2015 – 2023)

Custodianship Research Business

Culture Learning International

To make our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment and be the most open, creative

and innovative institution of its kind by 2023.

Document:http://goo.gl/h41wW7 Speech:https://goo.gl/Py9uHK

Roly Keating (Chief Executive Officer of the British Library)

To make our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment and be the most open, creative

and innovative institution of its kind by 2023.

http://goo.gl/h41wW7

https://goo.gl/Py9uHK


Collections – not just books!> 180* million items

> 0.8* m serial titles

> 8* m stamps

> 14* m books

> 3* m sound recordings> 4* m maps

> 1.6* m musical scores

> 0.3* m manuscripts

> 60* m patents

King’s Library *Estimates


http://www.bl.uk/projects/british-library-labsFunded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

http://www.bl.uk/projects/british-library-labs


Wider…not just Researchers

Researchershttps://goo.gl/WutNyi

Artistshttp://goo.gl/nNKhQ2

LibrariansCurators

https://goo.gl/9NWZUW

Software Developershttps://goo.gl/7QQ5Tf

Archivistshttps://goo.gl/x7b4tg Educators

https://goo.gl/qh01Mi

https://goo.gl/WutNyi

http://goo.gl/nNKhQ2

https://goo.gl/9NWZUW

https://goo.gl/7QQ5Tf

https://goo.gl/x7b4tg

https://goo.gl/qh01Mi

http://labs.bl.uk/

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjVxK_PgvDLAhWG7BQKHZmrBGUQjRwIBw&url=https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/students-experiences-and-expectations-of-the-digital-environment-23-jun-2014&bvm=bv.118443451,d.d24&psig=AFQjCNF-TGRsXGUyNipl29gRq9Ctq1DXsQ&ust=1459688766360665

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi4n4vngvDLAhVCyRQKHa7mBFIQjRwIBw&url=http://gilar666.deviantart.com/art/Bob-Dylan-PopArt-WPAP-456487085&bvm=bv.118443451,d.d24&psig=AFQjCNFq1HK9H9bWT8Il7lf1ddxwgC13Pg&ust=1459688810530297

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwixw5OghPDLAhXB8RQKHR8fAgUQjRwIBw&url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/64204416@N02/5865284029&bvm=bv.118443451,d.d24&psig=AFQjCNGLkpdYpg4p1mdINIPZW3b88mkv_w&ust=1459689220725118

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjZlNC3g_DLAhWBxRQKHcy4BKcQjRwIBw&url=https://pixabay.com/en/photos/programming/&bvm=bv.118443451,d.d24&psig=AFQjCNHO1wex2sL_pEsMiCdHiSyvUJerKw&ust=1459688992858427

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiFm97Vg_DLAhUHOBQKHawmDggQjRwIBw&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project&bvm=bv.118443451,d.d24&psig=AFQjCNE6LE17EHFAIkog61UDT0p8tVeipA&ust=1459689058496095

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiz772ag_DLAhVMvRQKHexsBW8QjRwIBw&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_in_the_classroom&bvm=bv.118443451,d.d24&psig=AFQjCNFK-ORJvNFKcyEgoYjoUbHDbxZvbw&ust=1459688927923110


Curators / Researchers

Access & Reuse Group

©

Developers/ Technical

Staff

Project Board

Universities & wider

The World

ResearchersBL Labs

British Library

Digital Scholarship

DigitalContent

United Kingdom

Advisory Board

Digital Research

Stakeholders involved in Labs


Digital research methods

Visualisations

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

Location based searching & Geo-tagging CrowdsourcingHuman Computation


How are we doing this?


Competition

Awards

Projects

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

Show us what you have already done with our digital content in research, artistic, commercial and learning and

teaching categories

Talk to us about working on collaborative projects


Why are doing this?

• Working closely with and listening to those who want use our digital collections and data for their work and helping to build services, tools and processes to support them

• We can learn how we are and should be supporting them.– Is the access to digital collections we provide sufficient?– Do we have the right tools?– Do we provide the right support?– Where are the gaps between what they want and what we can

give?– How do we build the bridges to overcome them?– Many more reasons…


digitalData all around us!

/

Knowledge Quarter London55 knowledge organisations within 1 mile radius of Kings Cross, http://www.knowledgequarter.london

https://goo.gl/pGO7QY

digitalData all around us!

http://www.knowledgequarter.london/

http://www.knowledgequarter.london/

https://goo.gl/pGO7QY


#bldigital1-2 %* digitised

* estimate

Digitisation

Partnerships Commercial & Other Organisations

Amountincreasing rapidly

Bias in digitisation

http://goo.gl/bR9UJL Sample Generator

http://goo.gl/bR9UJL


So little digitised…?

• Common misconception that all our physical items are digitised. No! Costs time and resources!

• Still a big number though!

• Dialogue is either:– you are lucky and we have the digital content relevant to your

research– we don’t have, exactly what your looking for but this is what we

have, is there anything of interest?

• We tend to attract researchers with ‘fuzzier’ research boundaries

• Artists find this dialogue easier

• Access easier for out of copyright content


only in Reading

Rooms due to ©

only on site due to

© or ethical etc

not online / available –

various storage devices,

personal data

online and open

British Library

online behind paywall

Challenges of Digital access at the Library


The Story of the Collection!

Collection

CuratorWho paid for the digitisation?

Who did the digitisation?Technology used

Born digital?

Published

Unpublished

Where is it?

Can it still be accessed?

Generates income

Reputational Risk

Legalities

Political

Ego Surprises

Metadata

Old format not supportedWhat media was the digitisation done from?

Documentation

No Metadata

Messy Metadata

Still there?

Sometimes it’s complicated, better to know as much as possible, if you want to open it up!


Finding Open Digital Collections at the British Library

• Curated?Learn the story behind a collection!Is there a human who knows the ‘story’ about the collection, who wants it used, are there any surprises lurking?

• Where is it, is it accessible?

• Licensing?Internal Access and Reuse and Licensing Group (Risk assessment group – Strategic, Commercial, Copyright, Curatorial, Technical)

• Metadata available? What state is it and does it need cleaning?

https://goo.gl/Qjeqo1

https://goo.gl/Kfc4qc

Access & Reuse Group

©

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjJ86v8qqbLAhXkYpoKHekTDekQjRwIBw&url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/verbeeldingskr8/15563333617&bvm=bv.115339255,d.d24&psig=AFQjCNFf6a3iuD4kIHWqVB0BoO-BHTWlMA&ust=1457156975976150


Open Licensed Digital Content?

15% Openly Licensed

Working through

Breakdown by collection*Manuscripts 59%Books 9%Maps and Views 7%Newspapers 3%Archives and Records 3%Paintings, Prints and Drawings 2%

*Based on digitisation projects

Largest proportion of fundingPublic / Private Partnership

15% Openly Licensed85% Available onsite


READING ROOM

ON SITE

NOT ONLINE

OPEN

British Library

£

Digital access at the Library

Labs Residency Model


Playbills, Books, Newspapers (includes OCR)

Digital collections and DatasetsAt the British Library

British National Bibliography

http://bnb.data.bl.uk

http://sounds.bl.ukhttp://dml.city.ac.uk/

Music (Recordings & Sheet) & Soundshttp://goo.gl/frSMJtBroadcast News (TV and Radio)

http://goo.gl/cwThHw

http://goo.gl/pBkisZhttp://goo.gl/E8aRyQ

Usage dataImages, Manuscripts & Maps

http://www.qdl.qa/ Qatar Digital Library

http://idp.bl.uk/International Dunhuang

Project

Mapshttp://www.bl.uk/maps/

Hebrew Manuscriptshttp://goo.gl/4sbCp9

Flickr & Wikimedia Commons

https://goo.gl/LZRmaZ

http://bnb.data.bl.uk/

http://sounds.bl.uk/

http://dml.city.ac.uk/

http://goo.gl/frSMJt

http://goo.gl/cwThHw

http://goo.gl/pBkisZ

http://goo.gl/E8aRyQ

http://www.qdl.qa/

http://idp.bl.uk/

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

http://goo.gl/4sbCp9

https://goo.gl/LZRmaZ


Cultural Heritage DatasetsDatasets about our collections Bibliographic datasets relating to our published and archival holdings

Datasets for content mining Content suitable for use in text and data mining research

Datasets for image analysisImage collections suitable for large-scale image-analysis-based research

Datasets from UK Web ArchiveData and API services available for accessing UK Web Archive

Digital mapping Geospatial data, cartographic applications, digital aerial photography and scanned historic map materials https://data.bl.uk

Discussion list: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CULTURAL-HERITAGE-DATASETS

http://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/datasets-about-our-collections

http://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/datasets-for-content-mining

http://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/datasets-for-image-analysis

http://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/datasets-from-uk-web-archive

http://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/digital-mapping

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CULTURAL-HERITAGE-DATASETS


Taking a peek at our Open Data


002819694


Optically Character Recognised (OCR) generated TextScanned Page

Image on Flickr Commons

https://goo.gl/AC43vs

https://goo.gl/AC43vs


OCR XML Generated by ABBY Fine Reader


Taking a peek at our onsite only accessible data


Accessing digitised newspapers onsite at the BL

• Need to be security cleared so that you exist as a BL entity– Hence ‘Researcher in Residence Model’

• Permission required from internal IP department and perhaps commercial company involved in the digitisation

• 20 % rule in terms of re-use in research

• Learning pathways so that this becomes ‘everyday’



1

Results of digitisation exist on Windows file shares!

Windows 7, external access possible through Citrix Server


Accessing digitised newspapers onsite at the BL (JISC 1)

2

12 Volumes, each with terabytes of data



3



4



5



6



7



8



9



10



11



12



13

Accessing original master image (not cropped or post processedOr Service Copy (post processed)

and results of OCR available as ALTO XML



14a

Accessing original master image (not cropped or post processed)



Accessing original master image (not cropped or post processed)

14b



15a

Accessing Service Copy (post processed) and results of OCR available as ALTO XML



Accessing Service Copy (post processed)

15b



15c

Accessing OCR as ALTO XML


Accessing digitised newspapers through Gale Interface (subscription)

1


Accessing digitised newspapers through Gale Interface (subscription)

2


Virtual Infrastructure for OCR text

OCR text scraped from digitised newspapers

and in cloud

Jupyter notebookWrite code in browser

Results in browserhttp://jupyter.org

http://jupyter.org/


What did people

actually do?


Machine Learning / Reading• Analogies to how humans read

• Machines acquire ‘knowledge’ and use that knowledge to make sense of new situations

• BL doing this on a case by case basis.

• Need computational and human effort

• Human input as to where to look > computational ‘lasso throwing’ > human sift

• Legalities of this process being ‘ironed’ out with publishers

• Not well understood area…


The smell of soup!

Thanks to Memo Akten (@memotv on twitter) for the inspiration!

https://goo.gl/toq4Bo Nasreddin, 13th Century Turkish Sufi

http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/330/reading/smell1.htm

https://twitter.com/memotv

https://goo.gl/toq4Bo

http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/330/reading/smell1.htm


Messy Data!Optical Character Recognition


Finding things in messy data

Mrs Folly• Clean up some manually• Get ‘ground truth’• Write code to find things

reliably in it automatically• Try code on messy content• Tweak if necessary• Digital lasso around content• Manually sift through


Katrina Navickas (2015) Political Meetings Mapper

http://politicalmeetingsmapper.co.ukhttps://goo.gl/Qq78Oa

Labs Symposium 2015

https://goo.gl/BSA3be

Interview 2015

The Chartist Newspaperhttp://goo.gl/vOLSnH

Chartist Monster Meeting

Chartists Re-enactment London

http://politicalmeetingsmapper.co.uk/

https://goo.gl/Qq78Oa

https://goo.gl/BSA3be

http://goo.gl/vOLSnH

http://a5.typepad.com/6a01a73da1a4dc970d01b8d127b885970c-pi

http://a1.typepad.com/6a01a73da1a4dc970d01b8d1c0ad99970c-pi


Black Abolitionist Performances & their Presence in Britain (2016) – Hannah-Rose Murray

FrederickDouglass

EllenCraft

JosiahHenson

Ida B Wells

A Performance by Joe Williams &

Martelle Edinborough

http://frederickdouglassinbritain.com/

http://frederickdouglassinbritain.com/


Use of Overproof – OCR Correction

Also just re-OCR?


See Bob Nicholson – Looking for JokesSee Jennifer Batt – Looking for Poems


What can 65,000books tell us?

Image: Artwork by Alicia Martin

Just one open digital collection


Worked better for female faces than men’s

Press

http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.comPosts image every 30 minutes

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

1,020,418 imagesneed tagging!

Creative uses of images

Face recognition

Mechanical Curator

http://goo.gl/qPPgxX

Flickr

Snipping out imagesfrom 65,000 Digitised Books*

>600,000,000 views

>15,500,000 tags

https://goo.gl/FgZ4HM

Work @ BL by Ben O’Steen, Labs

and Digital Research Team*Matt Prior - http://goo.gl/j29Tnx

Since Dec 2013

http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/

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

http://goo.gl/qPPgxX

https://goo.gl/FgZ4HM

http://goo.gl/j29Tnx


Opportunities – increasing traffic to Library services

You can purchase a ‘High Res’ Copy

View in the Library Item Viewer

Download .pdfAll illustrations

in book

Other illustrations in booksPublished in same year

View the item in the Library Catalogue Tags auto generated

User generatedTag

Grouping for image


Tagging a million imagesIterative Crowdsourcing

http://goo.gl/j6fxac

Cardiff University’sLost Visions Project

http://www.metadatagames.org/

Metadata Games

James Heald

Mario Klingemann

Chico 45

Use computational methods

Human Tagger

Top British Library Flickr Commons Taggers

http://goo.gl/8SkfM1

Machine LearningSearch Engine

& Google Imagesearch

http://goo.gl/j6fxac

http://www.metadatagames.org/

http://goo.gl/8SkfM1


Special Jury’s Prize (2015)James Heald – Wikimedia and Map work

https://goo.gl/WYZCB2

http://goo.gl/HNQq5e

https://goo.gl/VPgffL

https://commons.wikimedia.org/

https://goo.gl/djtm1b

Labs Symposium (2015)Geotagging maps

54,000 Maps

https://goo.gl/WYZCB2

http://goo.gl/HNQq5e

https://goo.gl/VPgffL

https://commons.wikimedia.org/

https://goo.gl/djtm1b


Adam Crymble (2015)Crowdsource Arcade

What if crowd sourcing

looked like this?

http://goo.gl/LBfJ4W

http://goo.gl/OH9pOZ

https://goo.gl/7z0j8p

30 mins talkLabs Symposium (2015)

https://goo.gl/SSRsdd

5 min interview (2015)

http://goo.gl/0APpE8

Game Jam

http://goo.gl/LBfJ4W

http://goo.gl/OH9pOZ

https://goo.gl/7z0j8p

https://goo.gl/SSRsdd

http://goo.gl/0APpE8

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/.a/6a00d8341c464853ef01b7c7c8e442970b-pi


SherlockNet: Competition Winner 2016Karen Wang, Luda Zhao and Brian Do

Using Convolutional Neural Networks to Automatically Tag and Caption the British Library Flickr Commons 1 million Image Collection

Classify into one of 12 categories

>20 million tags added (total now 20 million overall)>100,000 experimental captionsData available soon!

bit.ly/sherlocknet

Pooled surrounding Optical Character Recognised

text on page from similar images

Used Microsoft COCO (photographs) & British Museum Prints and Drawings

collections as training sets.

Tags Captions


Artistic / Creative Works

http://goo.gl/dM8ieA

Mario Klingeman (2015)

http://www.crossroadsofcuriosity.com

David Normal 2014 and 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GRgj7Q5OM0

Rob Walker 2014

http://goo.gl/bNxGZZ

Kris Hoffman (2016)

https://goo.gl/QilqqT

Jiayi Chong 2016Ling Low 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcOP1E5bRE0https://www.facebook.com/RealmlandStory/

Paul Rand Pierce 2016

A Hat on the GroundSpells trouble

Tragic Looking Women44 Men who Look 44

(Notice the direction faces)

http://goo.gl/dM8ieA

http://www.crossroadsofcuriosity.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GRgj7Q5OM0

https://goo.gl/QilqqT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcOP1E5bRE0

https://www.facebook.com/RealmlandStory/


Mario Klingemann 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgnxnmqnR7YGoogle Arts and Culture Lab – Experiments with Machine Learning

https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgnxnmqnR7Y

https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/


Imaginary Cities – BL Labs Project 16-17Michael Takeo Magruder

https://goo.gl/4ARwTy

An artistic exploration seeking to create provocative fictional cityscapes for the Information Age from the British Library’s digital collection of historic urban maps

https://goo.gl/4ARwTy


Some Lessons Learned and Challenges so far…• Everything starts from a conversation (external and internal)!

• Need to have several conversations with several stakeholders and tap into their tacit knowledge that isn’t always written down (esp. internal).

• It’s hard work at the beginning!

• Expectations change when researchers actually see the data, systems and experience the ‘culture’ of the organisation.

• We tend to work with researchers who can be ‘flexible’ with their research questions and are willing to embrace challenges.

• Often misunderstandings because of jargon & different meaning of words.

• Embrace dirty data, it may never be perfect!


Some Lessons Learned and Challenges so far…(2)

• Many researchers have the domain knowledge but lack the technical skills to use Digital Research methods. Should they be teamed up with those that have problems that need solving (Computing) or get trained?

• Identifying / bridging gaps for researchers to use data, help them ‘navigate’ through the Library to get the data they want (sometimes).

• Huge appetite to use digital content & data (e.g. Flickr Commons stats).

• Start small and simple, but think big!

• Create and embrace serendipity, stimulate the imagination, work fast, give it energy.

• Letting go of the emotional and psychological connection to “my” collection

• If digitised collections are not used, what is the point of digitising them?

• Fail faster (don’t be afraid), small experiments, reject perfectionism, good enough


The Magic of Openness!

• By opening collections up we are creating the possibility to have them used in ways only restricted by human imagination.

• Need to work hard to tell people about our Digital Collections and Data especially if not easy to find, creating serendipity and opportunities for use!

• Give plenty of examples to inspire use!

• Support and celebrate the use!


Exercise – Explore or Imagine Our Data!• CSV of Metadata

https://data.bl.uk/digbks/dig19cbooks-mdata-csv.csv

• 19th Century Books - Book Metadata - 01/09/2013.https://data.bl.uk/digbks/db21.html

• Digitised Books - Flickr Tag History - Dec 2013 to March 2016. TSVhttps://data.bl.uk/digbks/db15.html

• Digitised Hebrew Manuscripts - Metadatahttps://data.bl.uk/hebrewmanuscripts/heb1.html

• Digitised Hebrew Manuscripts: Or 2210 - Or 2364https://data.bl.uk/hebrewmanuscripts/heb8.html

• Theatrical playbills from Britain and Ireland (OCR text only)https://data.bl.uk/playbills/pb2.html

• Portraits of actors, views of theatres and playbills (covering 1750 - 1821 in a single volume)https://data.bl.uk/singlesheet/por1.html

• Volumes of Lysons Collectanea (Amusements), comprising broadsides, cuttings, advertisements on amusements.1660-1840.https://data.bl.uk/singlesheet/ad1.html

Work in pairs!

https://data.bl.uk•Report back on Data!•Data Quality•Issues

Or an idea you have thought ofwhat to do with the data!http://labs.bl.uk/Ideas+for+Labs

Smaller datasets


Contact us

Mahendra MaheyManager of BL Labs

[email protected]@bl.uk

bl labs presentation at liverpool john moores university

Education