british library labs - what? why?
TRANSCRIPT
● Do sentiment analysis algorithms agree with one another enough to be considered
valid?
● Do sentiment analysis results agree with humans performing the same task
enough to be considered valid?
● Is Jockers’ instantiation of aggregate sentiment analysis validly measuring
anything besides random fluctuations?
● Is aggregate sentiment analysis, by human or machine, a valid method for revealing
plot arcs?
● If aggregate sentiment analysis finds common but distinct patterns and they don’t seem to
map onto plot arcs, can they still be valid measurements of anything at all?
● Can a subjective concept, whether measured by people or machines, actually be
considered invalid or valid?
Getting to the heart of it
British Library Labs works with researchers on their specific problems, trying to assess how widely this problem is felt.
With their help, we talk to communities of researchers and try to pinpoint what they need as opposed to what they think they need to ask us.
* (2012) https://ariddell.org/where-are-the-novels.html
One solution keeps appearing:
All projects to date would’ve been made incredibly easier if:
• Every thing had a URL.• The URL linked to a page that tells you all
about that thing.• It should link to other, related things.• The page was machine-readable - never
assumed a human would always read it.
David Normalhttp://www.davidnormal.com/
Burning Man Festival
David Normal created light boxes around theBurning man, using the British Library’s Flickr Images
“Crossroads of Curiosity” launched on 20th June 2015
http://www.robertelliottsmith.com/?p=530
Release data with the attitude that people will tell you why it is wrong and give them tools to fix it.
Georeferencing maps found in books, gives data that can be used to generate more specific metadata about what those books concern.
* A term I have borrowed from Mia Ridge
BL Labs in 2015:
- Analysis of interactions with physical crowdsourcing interfaces
- (aka arcade games in the library!)
- Political Meetings Mapper- Based on 19th Century
newspaper listings of political and radical meetings.
