Digital scholarship blog

Contents

Introduction

Share Family and National Bibliographies

       What is a National bibliography?

       BNB in the Share Family

Benefits

Future developments

Beta service

Further information

Introduction

The British National Bibliography (BNB), first published in January 1950, is a weekly listing of new books and journals published or distributed in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.  Over the last seventy-three years, the BNB has adapted to changing customer needs by embracing new technologies, from cards in the 1950s to mark-up languages for data exchange in the 1970s and CD-ROM in the 1980s. The BNB now provides online access to details of over 5 million publications and forthcoming titles, ranging in scope from computer science to history, from novels to textbooks.

1. Examples of British National Bibliography records, April 19th 2023. Please click the image to see it in full size & detail.

In 2011, the Library launched the Linked Open Data BNB.  At that time, linked data was an emerging technology using Web protocols to link data sets, as envisaged in Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s concept of a Semantic Web^[1].  Our initial foray into linked data was successful from a technical perspective. We were able to convert BNB data held in Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) format into linked data structures and make it available in a variety of schemas under an open licence.  Nevertheless, we lacked the capacity to re-model our data in order to realise the potential of linked data.  As the technology matured, we began to look around for partners with whom we could collaborate to take BNB forward.

As described in my September 2020 blogpost, British Library Joins Share-VDE Linked Data Community, the British Library joined the Share Community (now the Share Family) to develop our linked data service. The Share Linked Data Environment is “a global family built on collaboration that brings libraries, archives and museums together with a common goal and joins their knowledge in an ever-widening network of inter-connected bibliographic data.” (Share Family, 2022).

Share Family and National Bibliographies

“The Share Family is a suite of innovative tools and services, developed and driven by libraries, for libraries, in an international collaborative, consortial effort. Share-VDE enables the discovery of knowledge to increase user engagement with library and cultural heritage collections.”^[2]

2. Share family components^[3]. Please click the image to see it in full size & detail.

The Share Family has supported us through the transition from our traditional MARC data to linked open data.  We provided a full copy of the British National Bibliography to the Share team for identification and clustering of entities, e.g. works, publications, persons. Working with colleagues from other institutions on Share-VDE working groups we contribute to the development of the underlying data structures and the presentation of data.  This collaborative approach has enabled delivery of the British National Bibliography as the first institutional tenant of the Share Family National Bibliographies Portal. 

What is a National bibliography?

“National bibliographies are a permanent record of the cultural and intellectual output of a nation or country, which is witnessed by its publishing output. They gather the bibliographic information of current publications to preserve and provide ongoing access to this record.”

IFLA Bibliography Section

The IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) Register of national bibliographies contains 52 entries, ranging from Andorra to Vietnam.  National bibliographies vary in scope, but each provides insights into the intellectual and cultural history of society, literature and publishing.  The Share Family National Bibliographies Portal offers the potential for clustering and searching multiple national bibliographies on a single platform.

BNB in the Share Family

3. Screenshot BNB home screen. Please click the image to see it in full size & detail.

The British Library is proud that the British National Bibliography is the first tenant selected for the Share Family National Bibliographies Portal.

BNB is now available to explore in Beta: https://bl.natbib-lod.org. You can search for publications, original works and people, as illustrated by these examples:

You can use the national bibliography to search for a specific publication, such as a large print edition of the novel Small island by Andrea Levy.

4. Screenshot: Bibliographic description of large print edition of Small Island by Andrea Levy. Please click the image to see it in full size & detail.

You can also find original works inspired by earlier works:

5. Screenshot: Results set for publication of the work, Small island by Helen Edmundso. Please click the image to see it in full size & detail.

Alternatively, you can search for works by a specific author… 

6. Screenshot: Original works by Douglas Adams. Please click the image to see it in full size & detail.

…or about a specific person

7. Screenshot: Original works about Douglas Adams. Please click the image to see it in full size & detail.

…or by organization

8. Screenshot: Results set for BBC. Please click the image to see it in full size & detail.

Benefits

What benefit do we expect to gain from this collaboration?

• We profit from practical experience our collaborators have gained through other linked data initiatives
• We gain access to a state of the art, extensible infrastructure designed for library data
• We gain a new channel for dissemination of the BNB, in aggregation with other national bibliographies

We are able to re-tool our metadata for the 21^st Century:

• Our data will be remodelled and clustered making it more compatible with current data models, including the IFLA Library Reference Model, RDA: Resource Description and Access, and Bibframe
• Our data will be enriched with URIs that will make it more effective in linked data environments
• The entity-centred view of the British National Bibliography offers new perspectives for researchers

Future developments

Conversion of the BNB and publication in the National Bibliographies Portal is only the beginning. 

• The BNB data from the Cluster Knowledge base will also be published in the triple store
• Original records will be available to the British Library as Bibframe 2.0, for dissemination or reuse as linked data
• Users will be provided with access to the data via data dumps and a SPARQL endpoint
• Our MARC records will be enriched with original Share URIs and URIs from external sources
• Other national bibliographies will join BNB in the national bibliographies portal

The British National Bibliography represents only a fraction of the Library’s data.   You can explore the British Library’s collection through our catalogue, which we plan to contribute to Share-VDE in future.

Beta service

The British National Bibliography in the Share Family is being made available in Beta. The service is still being tested. The interface and the functionality are subject to change and may not work for everyone.  You can tell us what you think about the service or report problems by contacting [email protected].

Further information:

British National Bibliography https://bnb.bl.uk  

Share VDE http://www.share-family.org/

Share Family wiki https://wiki.share-vde.org/wiki/Main_Page

Share VDE Virtual Discovery Environment in linked open data https://svde.org/

National Bibliographies in Linked Open Data https://natbib-lod.org

British National Bibliography Linked Open Data Portal https://bl.natbib-lod.org

Footnotes

[1]  Berners-Lee, Tim; James Hendler; Ora Lassila (May 17, 2001). "The Semantic Web". Appeared in: Scientific American. (284(5):34-43 (May 2001). 

[2] Share-VDE: supporting the creation, management and discovery of linked open data for libraries: executive summary. Share-VDE Executive Committee. December 7^th, 2022. Share-VDE Website (viewed 19^th June 2023)

[3] Share Family – Linked data ecosystem. How does it work?  http://www.share-family.org/  (viewed on 23^rd June 2023)

Three of us from the British Library Digital Research Team will be attending Digital Humanities 2023 in Graz, Austria next week. The last DH Conference we attended was in Utrecht in 2019 and we can’t wait to participate again in person this year. 

We are looking forward to meeting new and old DH-ers and to having exciting in-person conversations in between the conference sessions throughout the week. 

In particular we want to invite you to come and visit us during the conference poster session on Wednesday 12 July from 18:00. There will be drinks and nibbles on offer and ample time for discussions.

Here is a list of our posters and we look forward to talking to you about our collaborations and projects:

Rossitza will present a poster about collaborations as part of her AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship project Datafication and reuse of the descriptions of the incunabula collection at the British Library (pp.505-506)

As part of the Living with Machines project Mia contributed to the poster about Metadata Enrichment in the Living with Machines Project: User-focused Collaborative Database Development in a Digital Humanities Context (pp.553-555)

Stella will present the UK Digital Comics: Challenges and Opportunities of a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership. A Co-designed Comic Poster (pp.596-597)

We will also be at some of the pre-conference workshops on Tuesday. Rossitza will attend the all-day OCR4all - Open-Source OCR and HTR Across the Centuries, and Stella will participate in a couple of half-day workshops: the AudiAnnotate Workshop with Radio Venceremos, Rebel Radio Station and SpokenWeb: Using IIIF with AV to Build Editions and Exhibits and Creating, storing, and sharing your own web archives with open source Webrecorder tools

The pre-conference communications have been great and you can find out more about the conference programme in the impressive Digital Humanities 2023: Book of Abstracts | Zenodo We are thrilled to be joining this exciting event held in this stunning Austrian city.

Wir kommen, Graz. Bis bald!

If you work in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) sector and want to learn more about research repositories, then register for a hybrid repository training day for cultural heritage professionals hosted by the National Museum Cardiff in Wales on 31 May 2023.  

The British Library’s Repository Training Programme for cultural heritage professionals is funded as part of AHRC’s iDAH programme to support GLAM organisations in establishing or expanding open scholarship activities and sharing their outputs through research repositories.  

Insert from John Speeds County maps of Wales first published in The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain by George Humble (1610) made available by the National Library of Wales via Flickr Commons

Background 

The very first in-person event was in Edinburgh in January, with a follow-up online session in March and a second in-person event in York, hosted by the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) at the University of York on 23 March.  

We had attendees from the British Museum, National Museums Scotland, National Portrait Gallery, Towards a National Collection (AHRC) and the ADS in various roles including scholarly communications librarian, digital archivist, project manager and senior researchers in their organisations.  

The full programme for this event is available in a previous blog post. During the event, conversations took place on a range of topics from policy development, embedding research culture in organisations to encouraging staff to be involved in research cycles, different types of workflows in different institutions. In the feedback we received from the audience, there is a need to explore more about research data management, scholarly publishing, challenges in smaller organisations, working with emerging formats and building communities of practice.  

Now looking forward, the last hybrid repository training event will be hosted by the National Museum Cardiff in Wales on Wednesday 31 May. You can see the details below and register here. We are looking forward to meeting everyone who is interested in learning more about research repositories from cultural heritage organisations.  

Who is this training for? 

We invite everyone who is working in a cultural heritage or a collection-holding organisation in roles where they are involved in managing digital collections, supporting research lifecycle from funding to dissemination, providing research infrastructure and developing policies. However, anyone interested in the given topics is welcome to attend. 

What will you learn? 

This one-day training session is designed as a starting point to a broader set of knowledge that will help you to: 

• Understand the research landscape in cultural heritage organisations, benefits of openness for heritage research, basic concepts of open principles and influencing decision makers 
• Lay foundations for repository services including stakeholder engagement, policy development, technical overview and project planning 
• Adopt common principles and frameworks, technical standards and requirements in establishing repository services in a cultural heritage organisation 

• Explore basics of the scholarly communications ecosystem in the context of cultural heritage practices. 

Prerequisites 

No previous knowledge of topics is required. However, an understanding of open access will maximise the benefit of the taught content for attendees.  

Programme  

10:30 - Welcome and introductions

10:50 - iDAH Programme 

    Joanna Dunster, Head of (Research) Infrastructure, AHRC

11:05 - Session 1 Opening up heritage research 

This session covers the topics of understanding the research landscape in GLAM organisations, benefits of openness for heritage research, basic concepts of open principles and frameworks. 

    Ilkay Holt, Scholarly Communications Lead, BL

    Susan Miles, Scholarly Communications Speacialist, BL

11:45 - Q&A / Discussion

12:00 - Break  

12:15 - Session 2 Getting started with heritage GLAM repositories  

This session covers topics on the role of repository infrastructure in open access to heritage research and positioning research repositories in an organisation including policy and development. 

    Ilkay Holt, Scholarly Communications Lead, BL

    Susan Miles, Scholarly Communications Speacialist, BL

12:45 - Lunch

13:30 - Session continues 

13:55 - Q&A / Discussion

14:10 - Session 3: Realising and expanding the benefits 

This module covers technical overview and requirements for running a cultural heritage repository including an overview of BL’s Shared Research Repository, platforms and software, content administration, technical features.   

    Graham Jevon, Digital Services Specialist, BL

    Nora Ramsey, Assistant to Digital Services Specialist, BL

14:30 - Break

14:40 - Session continues

15:00 - Q&A / Discussion 

15:15-15:30 - Closing Remarks

Book your place 

In-person sessions are planned for a maximum of 35 people per event and registrants from cultural heritage institutions will be prioritised. Registration for the event is free. Please fill in this form to book your place.

Please note that registrations for in-person attendance will close at 4pm Friday 26th May and confirmation for in-person attendance will be sent to the registered email address.

Registrations for online attendance will close at 6pm on Tuesday 30th May. Zoom access link will be sent to the registered email address day prior to the event. 

Members of the Research Infrastructure Services Team at the British Library will be delivering the training programme. The team has over 25 years of broad experience and extensive knowledge in supporting open scholarship across the sector and with international partners. They also provide a Shared Research Repository Service for the cultural heritage organisations.  

Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions or comments about this training programme.  

Since March 2016, the Digital Scholarship Reading Group at the British Library has discussed articles, videos, podcasts, blog posts and chapters that touch on digital scholarship in libraries. I've shared our readings up to May 2018 and taken a thematic look at our readings at the intersection of digital scholarship and anti-racism in July 2020.

As the Living with Machines project draws to an end this (northern) summer, I thought I'd give an updated list of our readings since June 2018. I started including more pieces on deep learning, machine learning, AI ('artificial intelligence'), big data, data science, digital history, digitised newspapers, and user experience design for digital collections when we began discussing what became Living with Machines in early 2017. This was partly a way for me to catch up with relevant topics, and partly to lay the groundwork for LwM across the organisation. You can see that reflected in our topics up to May 2018 and onward.

Of course, the group continued to cover other topics, and sessions were suggested and/or led by colleagues including Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Annabel Gallop, Graham Jevon, Jez Cope, Lucy Hinnie, Mary Stewart, Nora McGregor, Sarah Miles, Sarah Stewart and Stella Wisdom. Especial thanks to Rossitza Atanassova and Deirdre Sullivan who’ve been helping me run the group in recent years. In 2021 we started using the January session to invite colleagues across the Library to look around and pick topics for discussion in the year ahead.

So what did we discuss from June 2018 to the end of 2022?

• 'Big Data' and Digital Collections – pick one or more of pdf, CHISpaper.pdf, Digital archives as Big data.pdf, 1461444816661553.pdf
• Access & Management for Meaningful Collections - Machine Learning & Crowdsourcing – take a look at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/secrets-of-rebel-slaves-in-barbados-will-finally-be-revealed; https://blogs.bl.uk/living-knowledge/2022/02/behind-the-scenes-at-the-british-library-graham-jevon-cataloguer-for-the-endangered-archives-program.html; https://blogs.bl.uk/endangeredarchives/2021/07/help-trace-the-stories-of-enslaved-people-in-the-caribbean-using-colonial-newspapers.html
• Becoming a Desk(top) Profession: Digital Photography and the Changing Landscape of Archival Research
• Cancel Culture, Social Media & the Importance of Forgetting - listen, read or watch whatever you are able to, or just come along for the discussion! Podcast (20 mins) - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08ybt8d; Short article - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527476420918828; Video (10 mins) - https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/emma-smith-forgetting-digital-age
• Citation Capture: Enhancing Understanding of the Use of Unique and Distinct Collections within Academic Research.
• Climate Change and the Digital Humanities – watch Jo Walton’s Digital Humanities Climate Coalition (appx. 6 minutes long, 24:00-30:00); Helen Hardy’s Collections & Climate (appx. 7 minutes long, 42:24-51:00). Also Digital Humanities Climate Change Manifesto – mentioned in Jo Walton’s talk; Mobilising museums for climate action toolkit – In a nutshell, pp. 4-5; UKRI targets net zero computing blog post; Communicating Climate Risk, a Toolkit – Executive summary and key messages
• Cultural Analytics - Data Cultures, Culture as Data, https://eresources.remote.bl.uk:2127/10.22148/16.035.
• Data science or data humanities? Opportunities, barriers, and rewards in digitally-led analysis of history, culture and society (in-person excursion to the Turing lecture by Melissa Terras)
• Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence
• Deepfakes and Misinformation – pick one of 'Deepfakes & Misinformation: How dangerous are deepfakes?' - a blog post from the Dutch AV museum; 'Snapshot Paper - Deepfakes and Audiovisual Disinformation'; 'How do we work together to detect AI-manipulated media?' from the Witness Media Lab
• Digital Art History and the Computational Imagination
• Digitisation & Data Sovereignty - the CARE Principles (PDF summary); The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, http://eresources.remote.bl.uk:2240/10.5334/dsj-2020-043; Working with the CARE principles: operationalising Indigenous data governance
• Digitizing and Enhancing Description Across Collections to Make African American Materials More Discoverable on Umbra Search African American History
• Emerging Formats Research and Collecting - Interactive Storytelling, https://eresources.remote.bl.uk:2127/10.1007/978-3-030-62516-0_27
• Emerging Formats: Complex digital media and its impact on the UK Legal Deposit Libraries
• Engaging in Collaboration from Trading Zones of Digital History
• Enhanced Curation and Contextual Collections - Berendse, Z, 2020. Browsing History: Archiving Video Game Context; also Newman, J (2011) '(Not) playing games: player-produced walkthroughs as archival documents of digital gameplay'; blog post by Shu-Wen Lin: Level Up: Playing to Document and Preserve Video Games.
• Exploring the Bloodaxe Archive: a creative and critical dialogue
• George Oates: Making and Remaking Collections Online
• Ground Truth: In the Archives That Train Machine Learning – online excursion to a lecture at the National Archives by Kate Crawford
• How NOT to create a digital media scholarship platform: the history of the Sophie 2.0 project
• Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook
• Is Santa Claus Real?
• Language Preservation & Discoverability - Bugis manuscripts and Batak manuscripts (and provenance). Also check out Equitable Access: Using Metadata to Level the Playing Field in a Multilingual Country (video, from 0:00-11:40); Challenging legacies slidedeck (Arlis 13 May 2022) – Alan Danskin, Collection Metadata Standards Manager, BL
• New Scholarship in the Digital Age: Making, Publishing, Maintaining, and Preserving Non-Traditional Scholarly Objects and Library of Congress Digital Scholarship Working Group Report
• Of global reach yet of situated contexts: an examination of the implicit and explicit selection criteria that shape digital archives of historical newspapers
• Open Access in Digital Scholarship - Open Humanities: Why Open Science in the Humanities is not Enough
• Oral History & COVID Collection – pick from Charlie Morgan’s Oral History Society blog post on the rapid response approach to collecting tricky remote interviews: https://www.ohs.org.uk/general-interest/when-the-crisis-fades-what-gets-left-behind/; references the excellent Eira Tansey blog post: https://eiratansey.com/2020/06/05/no-one-owes-their-trauma-to-archivists-or-the-commodification-of-contemporaneous-collecting/. “First, Do No Harm”: Tread Carefully Where Oral History, Trauma, and Current Crises Intersect, Jennifer A. Cramer, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00940798.2020.1793679; collecting during COVID in this short blog post: https://oralhistoryreview.org/current-events/nhs-70-covid-19/ (Stephanie Snow and Angela Whitecross)
• Participation in heritage crowdsourcing
• Practical AI Ethics – pick one of Lessons from archives: strategies for collecting sociocultural data in machine learning or Managing Bias When Library Collections Become Data
• Queer Criticalities, Instagram, and the Ethics of Museum Display
• Reviews in Digital Humanities – pick an article that matches your interests
• Serving researchers in a self-service world
• Slow librarianship – pick one of https://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2021/10/18/what-is-slow-librarianship/ or http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2017/the-innovation-fetish-and-slow-librarianship-what-librarians-can-learn-from-the-juicero/
• Strategies for the Curiosity‐Driven Museum Visitor
• The Consequences of Framing Digital Humanities Tools as Easy to Use
• The Equivalence of “Close” And “Distant” Reading; Or, toward a New Object for Data-Rich Literary History
• The Nightmare of Surveillance Capitalism
• Towards a User-Centric Evaluation of UK Non-Print Legal Deposit: A Digital Library Futures White Paper
• Triggers, Decontextualisation & Digitised Collections - pick one of On Trigger Warnings: https://www.aaup.org/report/trigger-warnings; Labeling and Rating Systems: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/labelingrating; What to Know When Watching Gone With the Wind (4 minutes 25 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DF2FKRToiQ; Digitization Selection Criteria as Anti-Racist Action: https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/14667
• User experience design for libraries – pick one of slides for 'UX, ethnography and possibilities: for Libraries, Museums and Archives' by Ned Potter https://www.slideshare.net/thewikiman/ux-ethnography-and-possibilities-for-libraries-museums-and-archives; a short overview article: 'User Experience (UX) in Libraries: Let’s Get Physical (and Digital)' by Leo Appleton https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.317/
• Visual Style in Two Network Era Sitcoms
• Web 3 and Commercialisation of the Web. Take a look at: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/what; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3; NFTs Weren’t Supposed to End Like This by Anil Dash https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/nfts-werent-supposed-end-like/618488/; Web3 Is Headed Our Way. Are Cultural Institutions On Board? https://jingculturecrypto.com/we-are-museums-wac-fellowship-web3/
• What Can Big Data Teach Us about Eviction? by Jo Guldi
• What is Digital Humanities? Read Ain't No Way Around It: Why We Need to Be Clear About What We Mean By “Digital Humanities” and have a look through the Index of Digital Humanities Conferences
• Where are we now? A review of research on the history of women's soccer in Ireland
• Why Microsoft and Warner Bros. Archived the Original ‘Superman’ Movie on a Futuristic Glass Disc
• You and AI – Just An Engineer: The Politics of AI (video)

This is a guest post by Natalie Lucy, a PhD student at University College London, who recently undertook a British Library placement to work on a project Mapping Caribbean Diasporic Networks through the correspondence of Andrew Salkey.

Project Objectives

The project, supervised by curators Eleanor Casson and Stella Wisdom, focussed on the extensive correspondence contained within Andrew Salkey’s archive. One of the initial objectives was to digitally depict the movement of key Caribbean writers and artists, as it is evidenced within the correspondence, many of whom travelled between Britain and the Caribbean as well as the United States, Central and South America and Africa. Although Salkey corresponded with a diverse range of people, we therefore focused on the letters in his archive which were from Caribbean writers and academics and which illustrated  patterns of movement of the Caribbean diaspora. Much of the correspondence stems from 1960s and 1970s, a time when Andrew Salkey was particularly active both in the Caribbean Artists Movement and, as a writer and broadcaster, at the BBC.

Photograph of Andrew Salkey

Andrew Salkey was unusual not only for the panoply of writers, artists and politicians with whom he was connected, but that he sustained those relationships, carefully preserving the correspondence which resulted from those networks. My personal interest in this project stemmed from the fact that my PhD seeks to consider the ways that the Caribbean trickster character, Anancy, has historically been reinvented to say something about heritage and identity. Significant to that question was the way that the Caribbean Artists Movement, a dynamic group of artists and writers formed in London in the mid-1960s, and of which Andrew Salkey was a founder, appropriated Anancy, reasserting him and the folktales to convey something of a literary ‘voice’ for the Caribbean. For this reason, I was also interested in the writing networks which were evidenced within the correspondence, together with their impact.

What is Gephi?

Prior to starting the project, Eleanor, who had catalogued the Andrew Salkey archive and Digital Curator, Stella, had identified Gephi as a possible software application through which to visualise this data. Gephi has been used in a variety of projects, including several at Harvard University, examples of the breadth and diversity of those initiatives can be found here. Several of these projects have social networks or historical trading routes as their focus, with obvious parallels to this project. Others notably use correspondence as their main data.

Gathering the Data

Andrew Salkey was known as something of a chronicler. He was interested in letters and travel and was also a serious collector of stamps. As such, he had not only retained the majority of the letters he received but categorised them. Eleanor had originally identified potential correspondents who might be useful to the project, selecting writers who travelled widely, whose correspondence had been separately stored by Salkey, partly because of its volume, and who might be of wider interest to the public. These included the acclaimed Caribbean writers, Samuel Selvon, George Lamming, Jan Carew and Edward Kamau Brathwaite and publishers and political activists, Jessica and Eric Huntley.

Our initial intention was to limit the data to simple facts which could easily be gleaned from the letters. Gephi required that we did so on a spreadsheet ,which had to conform to a particular format. In the first stages of the project, the data was confined to the dates and location of the correspondence, information which could suggest the patterns of movement within the diaspora. However, the letters were so rich in detail, that we ultimately recorded other information. This included any additional travel taken by any of the correspondents,  and which was clearly evidenced in the letters, together with any passages from the correspondence which demonstrated either something of the nature and quality of the friendships or, alternatively, the mutual benefit of those relationships to the careers of so many of the writers.

Creating a visual network

Dr Duncan Hay was invited to collaborate with me on this project, as he has considerable expertise in this field, his research interests include web mapping for culture and heritage and data visualisation for literary criticism.  After the initial data was collated, we discussed with Duncan what visualisations could be created. It became apparent early on that creating a visualisation of the social networks, as opposed to the patterns of movement, might be relatively straightforward via Gephi, an application which was particularly useful for this type of graph. I had prepared a spreadsheet but, Gephi requires the data to be presented in a strictly consistent way which meant that any anomalies had to be eradicated and the data effectively ‘cleaned up’ using Open Refine. Gephi also requires that information is presented by way of a system of ‘nodes’; ‘edges’  and ‘attributes’ with corresponding spreadsheet columns. In our project, the ‘nodes’ referred to Andrew Salkey and each of the correspondents and other individuals of interest who were specifically referred to within the correspondence. The edges referred to the way that those people were connected which, in this case, was through correspondence. However, what added to the potential of the project was that these nodes and edges could be further described by reference to ‘attributes.’ The possibility of assigning a range of ‘attributes’ to each of the correspondents allowed a wealth of additional information to be provided about the networks. As a consequence, and in order to make any visualisation as informative as possible, I also added brief biographical information for each of the writers and artists to be inputted as ‘attributes’ together with some explanation of the nature of the networks that were being illustrated.

The visual illustration below shows not only the quantity of letters from the sample of correspondents to Andrew Salkey (the pink lines),  but also shows which other correspondents formed part of those networks and were referenced as friends or contacts within specific items of correspondence. For example, George Lamming references academic, Rex Nettleford and writer and activist, Claudia Jones, the founder of the Notting Hill Carnival, in his correspondence, connections which are depicted in grey. 

Gephi: Andrew Salkey correspondence network

The aim was, however, for the visualisation to also be interactive. This required considerable further manipulation of the format and tools. In this illustration you can see the information that is revealed about the prominent Barbadian writer, George Lamming which, in an interactive format, can be accessed via the ‘i’ symbols beside many of the nodes coloured in green.  

Whilst Gephi was a useful tool with which to illustrate the networks, it was less helpful as a way to demonstrate the patterns of movement, one of the primary objectives of the project. A challenge was, therefore, to create a map which could be both interactive and illustrative of the specific locations of the correspondents as well as their movement over time. With Duncan’s input and expertise, we opted for a hybrid approach, utilising two principal ways to illustrate the data: we used Gephi to create a visualisation of the ‘networks’ (above) and another software tool, Kepler.gl, to show the diasporic movement.

A static version of what ultimately will be a ‘moving’ map (illustrating correspondence with reference to person, date and location) is shown below. As well as demonstrating patterns of movement, it should also be possible to access information about specific letters as well as their shelf numbers through this map, hopefully making the archive more accessible.

Patterns of diasporic movement from Andrew Salkey's correspondence, illustrated in Kepler.gl

Whilst we are still exploring the potential of this project and how it might intersect with other areas of research and archives, it has already revealed something of the benefits of this type of data visualisation. For example, a project of this type could be used as an educational tool, providing something of a simple, but dynamic, introduction to the Caribbean Artists Movement. Being able to visualise the project has also allowed us to input information which confirms where specific letters of interest might be found within the archive. Ultimately, it is hoped that the project will offer ways to make a rich, yet arguably undervalued, archive more accessible to a wider audience with the potential to replicate something of an introductory model, or ‘pilot’ for further archives in the future. 

Don’t forget to register for the 2023 BL Labs Symposium (https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oAApT1laSFSCm28Kyfz4bA)

Following the latest advancements in AI is almost a job in itself. The constant excitement sometimes feels almost bewildering, and it leaves us a little room to really get stuck into peculiarities and joys of data and AI methods and tools emerging in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM). For the second part of the BL Labs Symposium this year, we will be looking to spend some time with the examples of real data, tools and methods emerging in the GLAM AI world.

We will start our Data and AI session with an exciting presentation by Yannis Assael from Deep Mind. Yannis will show us Ithaca, the first Deep Neural Network interactive interface built to restore and attribute ancient Greek inscriptions. We expect this to be a real game changer for the use of AI for the collections that include complex and incomplete fragments of text.

We will also explore some British Library examples of AI and machine learning, mainly using the examples of data derived from our newspaper and map collections. Kalle Westerling will reflect on the latest from the Living with Machines project, this is a ground-breaking research collaboration between The Alan Turing Institute, the British Library, and the Universities of Cambridge, East Anglia, Exeter, and London (QMUL, King’s College). Gethin Rees will tell us about his work that is engaging public with geospatial data and in the process improving our capabilities to locate national collections.

BL Labs are dedicated to opening up the British Library’s data, especially for all researchers who want to use it for different types of computational research. This remains a daunting task. But we have been working on it! Silvija Aurylaite, BL Labs Manager, will share the BL Labs direction of travel, including sharing our new BL Labs website in Beta. The site will be live for the first time, with the Symposium audience kicking off our testing and engagement phase.

We hope that this session will give us some time to share and reflect on the ongoing AI work in GLAM with all its excitement, challenges and opportunities. All going well, there may be even a chance to get your hands on some new datasets.

We hope you can join us at the BL Labs Symposium on Thursday 30 March 2023. For the full programme, and further information on all our speakers, please read our earlier blog post. We are also delighted to be going ahead with an informal drinks and networking drop in session at the Library between 6.30pm and 7.30pm and you are all most welcome to join us. Register for this and / or the Symposium here. 

One half of the 2023 British Library Labs Symposium will be dedicated to digital storytelling. This has been a significant part of BL Labs work over the years; we have collaborated with experimental artists from David Normal’s creative reuse of British Library Flickr images for his giant lightbox collage Crossroads of Curiosity installation at the 2014 Burning Man festival, to working with first runner up in the BL Labs 2016 competition Michael Takeo Magruder on his 2019 exhibition Imaginary Cities.

Crossroads of Curiosity by David Normal

In the last few years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic disruption, digital stories and engagement have become mainstream across the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector. New types of digital storytelling mixing social media, online exhibitions embedding narratives and digital objects, and interactive online events reaching entirely new audiences, delighted us all. However, we also discovered that there can be a saturation point with online engagement, and that many digital developments have some way to go to reach their full potential.

As we are hopefully entering healthier times, new opportunities to mix virtual and physical worlds are starting to open up. With this in mind, we felt that this is the right moment to explore a new age of digital storytelling at the 2023 BL Labs Symposium.

The idea is to explore what is changing in the world of technological possibilities and how they are continuing to develop. We have envisaged a journey that will take us from the big picture of the arising digital possibilities to more specific examples from the British Library’s work. In true BL Labs spirit we will also celebrate initiatives that creatively reuse the Library’s digital collections.

To help us look into the big trends, we are delighted to be joined by Zillah Watson, whose extraordinary breath of experience working with BBC, Meta, BFI and Royal Shakespeare Company amongst many others, will help us to get a deeper sense of the opportunities of virtual reality (VR). Zillah will look into what it means, not just to be dazzled with technological possibilities, but also to enter the magic of storytelling.

Talking of magic, we are lucky to welcome award winning Director, Anrick Bregman, and award winning Producer, Grace Baird. Anrick and Grace will take us deeper into the potential of using VR to uncover hidden stories. Anrick’s film A Convict Story is an interactive VR project built on British Library data that brings to life a story discovered by the linking of data from centuries ago, using data research powered by machine learning.

Even closer to home, our own Stella Wisdom and Ian Cooke, will talk about their current work on curating the British Library’s forthcoming Digital Storytelling exhibition (2 June – 15 October 2023), which will explore the ways technology provides opportunities to transform and enhance the way writers write and readers engage. Drawing on the Library’s collection of contemporary digital publications and emerging formats to highlight the work of innovative and experimental writers. It will feature interactive works that invite and respond to user input, reading experiences influenced by data feeds, and immersive story worlds created using multiple platforms and audience participation. This is an exciting development, as we can see how earlier British Library creative digital experiments, collaborations and research projects are building into an exhibition in its own right.

We hope you can join us for discussion at the BL Labs Symposium on Thursday 30 March 2023. For the full programme, and further information on all our speakers, please read our earlier blog post.

 You can book your place here. 

If you work in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) sector and want to learn more about research repositories, this event is for you.

The British Library’s Repository Training Programme for cultural heritage professionals is funded as part of AHRC’s iDAH programme to support GLAM organisations in establishing or expanding open scholarship activities and sharing their outputs through research repositories.

We had the first event in Edinburgh, in-person, hosted by the National Museums Scotland on 31 January. An online training event followed this on 8 March tailored on the basis of audience feedback in Edinburgh.

Our third training event will be in-person, the University of York will kindly host us in York on Thursday, 23 March 2023.

Photograph by Jonas Kakaroto from Pexels

Who is this training for?

We invite everyone who are working in cultural heritage or a collection-holding organisation in roles where they are involved in managing digital collections, supporting research lifecycle from funding to dissemination, providing research infrastructure and developing policies. However, anyone interested in the given topics are welcome to attend.

What will you learn?

This one-day training session is designed as a starting point to a broader set of knowledge that will help you to:

• Understand research landscape in cultural heritage organisations, benefits of openness for heritage research, basic concepts of open principles and influencing decision makers.
• Lay foundation for repository services including stakeholder engagement, policy development, technical overview and project planning.
• Adopt common principles and frameworks, technical standards and requirements in establishing repository services in a cultural heritage organisation.
• Explore basics of the scholarly communications ecosystem in the context of cultural heritage practices.

Prerequisites

No previous knowledge of the topic is required. However, an understanding of open access will maximise the benefit of the taught content for attendees.

Programme

10: 30  Welcome and introductions

11:00   Session 1 Opening up heritage research

This session covers the topics of understanding the research landscape in GLAM organisations, benefits of openness for heritage research, basic concepts of open principles and frameworks.

11:45   Break time

12:00   Workshop

12:30   Lunch

13:30   Session 2 Getting started with heritage GLAM repositories

This session covers the topics on role of repository infrastructure in open access to heritage research and positioning research repositories in an organisation including policy and development.

14:15   Break time

14:30   Session 3: Realising and expanding the benefits

This module covers technical overview and requirements for running a cultural heritage repository including an overview of BL’s Shared Research Repository, platforms and software, content administration, technical features. 

15:15   Closing remarks

15:30   Closure

Book your place

In-person sessions are planned for a maximum of 35 people per event and registrants from cultural heritage institutions will be prioritised. Registration for the event is free. Please fill this form to book your place by 20th March. Confirmation and event details will be sent to the registered email address.

Members of the Research Infrastructure Services Team at the British Library will be delivering the training programme. The team has over ten years of broad experience and extensive knowledge in supporting open scholarship across the sector and with international partners. They also provide a Shared Research Repository Service for cultural heritage organisations.

Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions or comments about this training programme.