This blog post is by Dr Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Digital Curator for Asian and African Collections, British Library. She's on Mastodon as @[email protected] and Bluesky as @adi-keinan.bsky.social

As someone with an ongoing interest in all things environmental sustainability – especially where digital work and technologies are concerned – I was highly motivated to plan and coordinate a month-long series of training events entitled “Discover Digital Sustainability”. Ran as part of the British Library’s Digital Scholarship Training Programme (DSTP) in March 2025, this training series explored the intersection of technology, digital practices, and environmental responsibility. Designed to spark practical climate action, it brought together staff from across the organisation, offering them the knowledge and tools needed to reduce the environmental impact of their digital work.

Building on the success of previous initiatives – including the DHCC/BL workshop in early 2024, ongoing Carbon Literacy Training, and the launch of the British Library’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy – this comprehensive programme featured a rich blend of talks, interactive workshops, and a reflective reading group session. Attendees engaged with topics ranging from data management, digital preservation, digitisation, and web design to the environmental implications of AI, hardware use, as well as procurement and supply chains.

The British Library’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy 2024-2030

Throughout the month, staff heard from experts in heritage, academia, and technology, as well as British Library colleagues leading by example in rethinking workflows and adopting greener digital practices. The training not only deepened our understanding of how to measure and reduce the carbon footprint of digital operations but also inspired a broader cultural shift toward sustainability in the way we create, manage, and deliver digital services.

Reading Group

The series kicked off with a dedicated reading group session focused on the theme of data and digital waste. It sparked thoughtful discussion around the environmental impacts of data creation, storage, and retention. Participants explored how to balance the social value of data with its environmental cost, drawing on key resources, mainly from Loughborough University’s Digital Decarbonisation project, which highlights the concept of “dark data” and the hidden carbon footprint associated with unused or unnecessary data.

The conversation set the stage for a timely follow-up webinar later that week, entitled “Your Data Carbon Footprint: What It Is & Why It Matters”, hosted by Leadership Through Data and featuring Professors Tom Jackson and Ian Hodgkinson from the Digital Decarbonisation project. Several attendees joined this session, which offered deeper insights into the scale and significance of data-related emissions and practical steps for managing digital waste more sustainably.

Screenshot of the “Digital Decarbonisation” homepage

Staff Talks

The training series featured six engaging staff talks (we call them 21^st Century Curatorship Talks), each offering unique perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of embedding sustainability into digital practices across the cultural, academic and technology sectors.

Katie Espley from the Library’s Corporate Information Management Unit shared practical strategies in her “Records Management Refresh” session, highlighting best practices for organising digital workspaces to reduce clutter and improve efficiency. Dr Nicôle Meehan (University of St Andrews) examined the environmental impact of museum digitisation, encouraging institutions to take action to reduce its carbon cost. From the tech industry, Lewis Richards (Chief Sustainability Officer, Microsoft UK) provided insights into Microsoft’s sustainability initiatives and how they are addressing environmental impact at scale.

Stacey Anderson (The Box Plymouth) contributed a session on sustainable digital preservation in museums and archives, while David Mahoney (University of Edinburgh) explored sustainable web design, offering practical ways to lower the environmental footprint of online content. Finally, Jon Ray (Oxford GLAM) presented the University of Oxford GLAM’s efforts to develop a digital sustainability action plan, showcasing how cultural organisations can take meaningful steps to reduce their digital carbon footprint. Together, these talks illustrated the breadth of sustainable digital practice and inspired staff to think critically about their own work.

Workshops

Three hands-on workshops offered staff the opportunity to dive deeper into the practicalities of digital sustainability, each approaching the topic from a different angle. In the “Future of Digital Sustainability”, Jo Walton and Nathalie Huegler from the University of Sussex Digital Humanities Lab led an interactive session and card game that explored the environmental impact of digital technologies and strategies for building more sustainable digital practices. Bailey Bryan and Tommy Ferry from the digital agency Wholegrain Digital followed with a focused workshop on the carbon footprint of web design, guiding participants through actionable steps to create more environmentally friendly websites.

The “Future of Digital Sustainability” workshop instructors and participants in action

Finally, a Hack & Yack session, led by Nora McGregor, brought staff together in a collaborative effort to co-create a Digital Sustainability online guide tailored for library professionals. This guide forms part of a broader initiative by the Digital Scholarship and Digital Cultural Heritage Collections Working Group (a LIBER working group chaired by Nora), now working in partnership with LIBER’s Data Science in Libraries group to build a centralised staff skills hub – a trusted resource for training at the intersection of libraries, cultural heritage, and digital technologies.

Key Takeaways

The different presentations and discussions brought to light the complex challenges and opportunities that lie at the intersection of digital practice and environmental responsibility. One of the recurring themes was the widespread underestimation or complete lack of measurement around digital-related carbon emissions. Many organisations still operate without clear data hygiene policies, and there is a notable lack of consistent, trustworthy reporting from digital service providers on their sustainability practices. This is compounded by limited awareness of the environmental footprint of routine digital activities, including hardware procurement, software use, and long-term digital storage.

Speakers highlighted the tensions many institutions face in balancing environmental goals with the practicalities of funding requirements, user experience expectations, and organisational responsibilities. The use of AI was a particular area of concern – not only for its increasing energy demands but also for the need to use it more responsibly and strategically. The importance of informing policy change and providing the sector with practical, actionable resources was emphasised as a priority for enabling progress.

The talks and workshops also underscored the importance of data and facts in making the case for change. Data centres alone are responsible for between 2.5% and 3.7% of global carbon emissions – potentially exceeding the aviation sector. Additionally, up to 65% of stored data is considered “dark” (unused), with another 15% classified as redundant. Reducing this unnecessary data load is essential, and speakers offered a range of sustainability strategies to help. These included selective digitisation that prioritises high-value or at-risk collections, the use of lossless compression formats to reduce file size without compromising quality, and scheduling energy-intensive processes like integrity checks during off-peak hours.

Other practical recommendations included sustainable web design principles, such as optimising images, reducing page weight, and minimising third-party scripts. Speakers also noted encouraging signs of progress in the form of evolving sector standards for sustainable digital archiving, and the growing emphasis on green procurement, evaluating vendors not just on price and functionality but also on their environmental credentials.

Finally, a clear call to action emerged around the need for collective effort. Sector-wide collaboration was viewed as essential for setting shared standards, influencing common suppliers, and fostering open dialogue. Tools such as carbon calculators and tracking toolkits can support these efforts, but lasting change will depend on sustained joint action and a willingness to embed sustainability into every aspect of digital practice. Importantly, this work must be done with a strong commitment to equity, ensuring that the push for digital efficiency does not come at the cost of access or inclusion.

What did participants think?

The training series saw a whopping number of 88 participants from many teams and department across the Library, many of which attended more than one event. A survey was conducted at the end of the training series, to assess the relevance of topics to both professional digital working and personal life, as well as gauge impact: what changes were participants going to make? How will their behaviour change? With some questions mandatory and some optional, the survey had 22 respondents in total.

On a scale from None (1) to Advanced (5), participants rated their knowledge of digital sustainability at 2.36 on average before the series, and at 3.64 on average afterwards. This demonstrates an increased level of confidence in understanding relevant topics. Survey results also show that almost everyone has learned new things, or reinforced things they’ve already known about. Most respondents also shared or intend to share knowledge acquired from the series, and most have made or intend on making changes in their professional role, with some also in their personal lives. Almost all of them would recommend similar events to colleagues in the future.

Agree/Disagree statements from the series' feedback survey

Looking into the changes that respondents were going to make, it was evident that participants were thinking critically about digital sustainability, from practical day-to-day actions to influencing organisational change. Several mentioned file and data management, for example reducing the duplication of files, doing a ‘spring clean’, or deleting unnecessary emails. Others talked about sustainable digital practices, like encouraging a climate aware task scheduler function built in for large jobs in development environments, or a desire to create a sustainability checklist for web editing. Several pointed to the importance of advocacy, knowledge sharing and team engagement, for example influencing policies, sharing knowledge about cloud storage considerations, encouraging mindful use of storage in platforms like MS Teams, or telling people about the Hugging Face list of models that require less resources.

Participants highlighted several aspects of the training series that they found especially valuable and enjoyable. The sessions were praised for being accessible to non-specialists, with clear and engaging presentations that made complex topics understandable. Attendees appreciated the opportunity to learn from experts across different fields, gaining new perspectives and recognising shared challenges. The diversity of talks throughout the month helped reinforce key ideas, making the learning experience more cohesive and impactful. Interactive elements, such as the “Future of Digital Sustainability” workshop and the educational card game, were particularly well received for being both fun and informative. Many found the enthusiasm and expertise of the speakers inspiring and valued the sense of community fostered throughout the series – feeling connected to others who are equally committed to addressing important issues.

We had some thoughtful and constructive feedback on how the training series could be improved. A recurring suggestion was to spread out the events over a longer period, with slightly shorter presentations and more interactive elements to keep engagement high. Several attendees expressed a desire for more practical, hands-on content, such as Hack & Yack sessions that focus on applying ideas directly to their work environments. There was also interest in exploring how digital sustainability can be balanced with usability and visual appeal, particularly for those working in online public engagement. A few attendees found the themes somewhat repetitive and proposed a structured progression – starting with theory and moving into application – for those attending multiple sessions. Additionally, ideas were raised about revisiting key topics in future sessions to keep the momentum going and share updates.

My favourite testimonial would probably be:

“I just wanted to drop a quick note to say how great it is that you're running these sessions. I think we often struggle to take environmental impacts into consideration when appraising options for digital systems and data projects so this is incredibly welcome.”

 

Feedback on the “Future of Digital Sustainability”

The “Future of Digital Sustainability” workshop received separate feedback, which was also really helpful. Participants found the workshop to be a highly engaging, enjoyable, and accessible way to explore the complex subject of digital sustainability. Many emphasised the fun, playful nature of the learning experience, noting how it made the subject matter more approachable and digestible. The interactive format encouraged rich discussions, peer learning, and collective reflection, allowing participants to learn not only from the facilitators but also from the expertise of their colleagues. Several appreciated the balance between educational depth and a light, participatory tone, saying it was both thought-provoking and practical. The workshop was seen as a great tool for building shared understanding and momentum within teams, with participants leaving more informed and motivated.

Interactive session at the end of the “Future of Digital Sustainability” workshop

Suggestions for improvement focused mostly on refining the structure of the card game used in the workshop. Some participants noted a need to better balance the depth of discussion with the pace of gameplay, proposing fewer cards, clearer ground rules, and a short introduction to the game strategy. Others recommended changes to the mechanics – such as modifying hand sizes, how actions and events are played, and how points are distributed – to reduce repetition and enhance flow. A few attendees also wished for a better way to track the many concepts raised during the game. Despite these suggestions, the consensus was that the game was a valuable and enjoyable tool. Participants also expressed interest in future collaboration and emphasised the importance of translating insights into actionable decisions across the organisation.

And as for my favourite quote –

“The workshop was soooo good! I hope you're able to run it again so that more BL folk can attend. I think we all left feeling more positive, informed and empowered than we entered.”

 

Next Steps

Organising the “Discover Digital Sustainability” training series at the British Library was an incredibly rewarding experience. I learned a great deal through the process and especially valued the chance to connect with other organisations and professionals working in this space. These conversations were not only inspiring but also opened up exciting possibilities for future collaboration. I’m proud that we were able to deliver something both meaningful and impactful, helping to bring the topic of digital sustainability to the forefront within our institution.

Looking ahead, I’m optimistic that many of the insights and ideas from the series will be put into practice – in line with the Library’s strategic action plan – across teams, departments, and individuals. There’s more to come too: I’ll be speaking at DH2025 in Lisbon this July, sharing our work through a paper on “Digital Humanities and Environmental Sustainability at the British Library,” and also plan to publish the topic guide on digital sustainability later this summer. Plus, we’ll be running the “Future of Digital Sustainability” workshop and card game again during Green Libraries Week, this time at our Boston Spa site. Our commitment to learning continues, and we’ll keep seeking new opportunities to support staff through the Digital Scholarship Training Programme.

This post is by Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives.

DHNB 2025 Conference Banner

This year’s Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic countries conference took place at the Estonian National Museum in Tartu. Last year was the first time I attended the DHNB conference (report available on Digital Scholarship Blog). The theme for this year was “Digital Dreams and Practices”. There were pre-conference workshops from March 3-4 with the main conference starting on the morning of March 5 and finishing on March 7. I participated in the Web Archive Collections as Data workshop held in the morning session on day two. 

This was a big conference with about 200 researchers and GLAM sector participants who attended from organisations based all over Europe as well as Japan. With such a big attendance there were multiple parallel sessions on each day. A detailed overview of the programme is available to download from the DHNB website. There was also a large poster presentation session at the end of day two of the conference. In the main hall all presenters had one minute to introduce their poster before going onto the floor to discuss the wide variety of topics in more detail.

Posters on display at the DHNB 2025 Conference

 There was a keynote on each day of the conference. The second day keynote was by Andrea Kocsis from Edinburgh University and current National Librarian’s Research Fellow in Digital Scholarship 2024-25 at the National Library of Scotland. She has worked closely with UK Web archive colleagues across the UK Legal Deposit Libraries to make the collections more accessible to wider audiences.

All three keynotes are available to watch on the DHNB website - https://dhnb.eu/conferences/dhnb2025/keynote-speakers/ 

It is hard to pick one highlight out of such a rich conference but I think it would be the presentation Collecting memories of the early internet by Johanna Arnesson, Evelina Liliequist, Coppélie Cocq from Umeå University, Sweden. The abstract is available on page 24 of the Programme Book of Abstracts. One of the key takeaways from this presentation was that more case studies from different countries are required. So far there have only been a few case studies that have reviewed early memories and/or experiences of the internet but people would have experienced the internet differently depending on their home country, age, socioeconomic status etc. It would be interesting to see researchers using the UK Web Archive resources to run a similar study in the UK.

Poster Slam at the DHNB 2025 Conference

Although the National Library of Estonia building is currently closed for renovation, I was delighted that I could meet up with their web archivist to discuss web archiving challenges and opportunities in Estonia. 

For a more detailed report on the Web Archive Collections as Data workshop see the UK Web Archive blog.

Fantastic Futures 2025: AI Everywhere, All at Once 

AI4LAM’s annual conference, December 3 – 5, 2025, British Library, London

The British Library and the Programme Committee for the Fantastic Futures 2025 conference are delighted to invite proposals for presentations and workshops for the Fantastic Futures 2025 conference.  

Fantastic Futures is the annual conference for the AI4LAM (Artificial Intelligence, for Libraries, Archives, Museums) community. Submissions are invited from colleagues around the world about organisations, collections, interest and experience with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies applied to or developed with cultural, research and heritage collections. This includes practitioners in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sector and Digital Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Data, Information and Computer Science researchers in Higher Education. 

Key information

• Call for proposals shared: Thursday 13 March 2025 
• Conference submission form opens: May 2025
  
• Proposal submission deadline: midnight anywhere, Sunday 1 June 2025 
• Notification of acceptance: 25 July 2025 
• Conference dates: December 3 – 5, 2025 
• Location: British Library, London, onsite – with some livestreams and post-event videos 

FF2025 Theme: AI Everywhere, All at Once 

We invite presentations on the theme of 'AI Everywhere, All at Once’. While AI has a long history in academia and practice, the release of public language models like ChatGPT propelled AI into public consciousness. The sudden appearance of AI ‘tools’ in the software we use every day, government consultations on AI and copyright and the hype about Artificial Intelligence mean that libraries, museums and archives must understand what AI means for them. Should they embrace it, resist it or fear it? How does it relate to existing practices and services, how can it help or undermine staff, and how do we keep up with rapid changes in the field? 

There are many opportunities and many challenges in delivering AI that create rich, delightful and immersive experiences of GLAM collections and spaces for the public, and meet the needs of researchers for relevant, reliable and timely information. Challenges range from the huge – environmental and economic sustainability, ensuring alignment with our missions, ethical and responsible AI, human-centred AI, ensuring value for money – to the practical – evaluation, scalability, cyber security, multimodal collections – and throughout it all, managing the pace of change. 

Our aim is to promote interdisciplinary conversations that foster broader understandings of AI methods, practices and technologies and enable critical reflections about collaborative approaches to research and practice. 

Themes   

We’re particularly interested in proposals that cover these themes:   

• Ethical and Responsible AI 
• Human-Centred AI / the UX of AI 
• Trust, AI literacy and society 
• Building AI systems for and with staff and users 
• Cyber-security and resilience 
• Interoperability and standards
• FAIR, CARE, rights and copyright
• Benchmarking AI / machine learning 
• Regional, national, international approaches to AI 
• Environmental sustainability  

Formats for presentations (Thursday, Friday December 4-5) 

• Lightning talk: 5 mins. These might pitch an idea, call for collaborators, throw out a provocation or just provide a short update 
• Poster  - perfect for project updates – what went well, what would you do differently, what lessons can others take? 
• Short presentation: 15 mins   
• Long presentation: 30 mins 
• Panel: 45 mins, multiple presenters with short position statements then discussion 

Formats for workshops or working group sessions (Wednesday December 3) 

• Formal, instructor-led sessions, including working groups, tutorials, hands-on workshops – 1 or 2 hours 
• Informal, unstructured sessions, including unconferences, meetups, hacking – 1 or 2 hours 
• Digital showcase (demo): 30 mins 

We value the interactions that an in-person event enables, so the default mode for this event is in-person presentations. However, if your proposal is accepted for inclusion in the conference but you are not able to travel to London, we can consider arrangements for making a virtual presentation on a case-by-case basis. Please contact the Programme Committee at [email protected] to discuss. 

The conference will be held over three days: one day of workshops and other events, and two days of formal sessions. The social programme will include opportunities for informal networking.  

Plenary sessions on Thursday and Friday will be livestreamed, recorded and published. 

Find out more and get updates 

• Join the AI4LAM Google Group https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ai4lam  

• Join the AI4LAM Slack for regular updates on the #ff2025 event channel: https://ai4lam.slack.com Join: https://join.slack.com/t/ai4lam/shared_invite/zt-1omthldn8-9vrGySjIRdija1nKQm0ltA  

• Check the AI4LAM FF2025 page for updates, including Frequently Asked Questions and information on our review criteria
  

• Send inquiries to [email protected]   

• Organisers: Rossitza Atanassova, Neil Fitzgerald and Mia Ridge, British Library
  

Further details about the conference submission process and registration will be supplied soon. 

This post was last updated 16 May 2025.

One of the highlights of our Digital Storytelling exhibition last year was hosting the 2023 MIX conference at the British Library in collaboration with Bath Spa University and the MyWorld programme, which explores the future of creative technology innovation.

MIX is an established forum for the discussion and celebration of writing and technology, bringing together researchers, writers, technologists and practitioners from around the world.  Many of the topics covered are relevant to work in the British Library as part of our research into collecting, curating and preserving interactive digital works and emerging formats.

As a new year draws near, we are looking forward to upcoming events. MIX will be back in Bath at the Locksbrook Campus on Wednesday 2 July 2025 and their call for submissions  is currently open until early February. Organisers are looking for proposals for 15 minute papers/presentations or 5 minute lightening talks from technologists, artists, writers and poets, academic researchers and independent scholars, on the following themes:

• Issues of trust and truth in digital writing
• The use of generative AI tools by authors, poets and screenwriters
• Debates around AI and ethics for creative practitioners
• Emerging immersive storytelling practices

MIX 2025 will investigate the intersection between these themes, including the challenges and opportunities for interactive and locative works, poetry film, screenwriting and writing for games, as well as digital preservation, archiving, enhanced curation and storytelling with AI. Conference organisers are also welcoming papers and presentations on the innovative use of AI tools in creative writing pedagogy. Deadline for submissions is 5pm GMT on Monday 10 February 2025, if you have any enquiries email [email protected].

As part of the programme, New York Times bestselling writer and publisher Michael Bhaskar, currently working for Microsoft AI and co-author of the book The Coming Wave: AI, Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma, will appear in conversation.

To whet your appetite ahead of the next MIX you may want to check out the Writing with Technologies webinar series presented by My World with Bath Spa University’s Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries and the Narrative and Emerging Technologies Lab. This series examines AI’s emerging influence across writing and publishing in various fields through talks from writers, creators, academics, publishing professionals and AI experts. The next webinar will be on Wednesday 22nd January 2025, 2-3pm GMT discussing AI And Creative Expression, book your free place here.

Attending memoQfest 2024 as a translator was an enriching and insightful experience. Held from 13 to 14 June in Budapest, Hungary, the event stood out as a hub for language professionals and translation technology enthusiasts. 

Streetviews of Budapest, near the venue for memoQfest 2024. Captured by the author

A Well-Structured Agenda 

The conference had a well-structured agenda with over 50 speakers, including two keynotes, who brought valuable insights into the world of translation.  

Jay Marciano, President of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA), delivered his highly anticipated presentation on understanding generative AI and large language models (LLMs). While he acknowledged their significant potential, Marciano expressed only cautious optimism on their future in the industry, stressing the need for a deeper understanding of the limitations. As he laid out, machines can translate faster but the quality of their output depends greatly on the quality of the training data, especially in certain domains or for specific clients. He believes that translators’ role will evolve so that they will become more involved with data curation, than with translation itself, to improve the quality of machine output. 

Dr Mike Dillinger, the former Technical Lead for Knowledge Graphs in the AI Division at LinkedIn, and now a technical advisor and consultant, also delved into the challenges and opportunities presented by AI-generated content in his keynote speech, The Next 'New Normal' for Language Services.  Dillinger holds a nuanced perspective on the intersection of AI, machine translation (MT), and knowledge graphs. As he explained, knowledge graphs can be designed to integrate, organize, and provide context for large volumes of data. They are particularly valuable because they go beyond simple data storage, embedding rich relationships and context. They can therefore make it easier for AI systems to process complex information, enhancing tasks like natural language processing, recommendation engines, and semantic search.  

Dillinger therefore advocated for the integration of knowledge graphs with AI, arguing that high-quality, context-rich data is crucial for improving the reliability and effectiveness of AI systems. Knowledge graphs can significantly enhance the capabilities of LLMs by grounding language in concrete concepts and real-world knowledge, thereby addressing some of the current limitations of AI and LLMs. He concluded that, while LLMs have made significant strides, they often lack true understanding of the text and context. 

Enhancing Translation Technology for BLQFP 

The event also offered hands-on demonstrations of memoQ's latest features and updates such as significant improvements to the In-country Review tool (ICR), a new filter for Markdown files, and enhanced spellcheck.  

Interior of the Pesti Vigado, Budapest's second largest concert hall, and venue for the memoQfest Gala dinner

As a participant, I was keen to explore how some of these features could be used to enhance translation processes at the British Library. For example, could machine translation (MT) be used to translate catalogue records? Over the last twelve years, the translation team of the British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership project has built up a massive translation memory (TM) – a bilingual repository of all our previous translations. A machine could be trained on our terminology and style, using this TM and our other bilingual resources, such as our vast and growing term base (TB). With appropriate data curation, MT could be a cost-effective and efficient way to maximise our translation operations. 

There are challenges, however. For example, before it can be used to train a machine, our TM would need to be edited and cleaned, removing repetitive and inappropriate content. We would need to choose the most appropriate translations, while maintaining proper alignment between segments. The same applies to our TB, which would need to be curated. Some of these data curation tasks cannot be pursued at this time, as we remain without access to much of our data following the cyberattack incident. Moreover, these careful preparatory steps would not suffice, as any machine output would still need to be post-edited by skilled human translators. As both the conference’s keynote speakers agreed, it is not yet a simple matter of letting the machines do the work. 

 This blog post is by Musa Alkhalifa Alsulaiman, Arabic Translator, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership. 

 British Library is delighted to host its annual Open and Engaged Conference on Monday 21 October, in-person and online, as part of the International Open Access Week. The Conference is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Research Libraries UK (RLUK).  

Open and Engaged 2024: Empowering Communities to Thrive in Open Scholarship will centre leveraging the power of communities in the axis of open scholarship, open infrastructure, emerging technologies, collections as data, equity and integrity, skills development and sustainable models to elevate research of all kinds for the public good. We take a cross sectoral approach to the conference programme – unifying around shared-values for openness – by reflecting on practices within research libraries both in higher education and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sectors as well as the national and public libraries.  

Open and Engaged 2024 is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Research Libraries UK (RLUK). Everyone interested in the conference topics is welcome to join us on Monday, 21 October! 

This will be a hybrid event taking place at the British Library’s Knowledge Centre in St. Pancras, London, and streamed online for those unable to attend in-person. 

The event will be recorded and recordings made available in the British Library’s Research Repository.

Registration

Registration is closed for in-person and online attendance. Registrants have been contacted with details. Any questions, please contact [email protected].  

Programme 

Slides and recordings of the talks are available as a collection in the British Library’s Research Repository.

09:30  Registration

10:00  Welcome remarks

10:10  Opening keynote panel: Cross disciplinary approach to open scholarship

Chaired by Sally Chambers, Head of Research Infrastructure Services at the British Library.

• Paola Castano, Research Fellow at the University of Exeter
• Hugh Shanahan, Professor of Open Science at the Royal Holloway University of London
• Jane Winters, Professor of Digital Humanities & Director of the Digital Humanities Research Hub at the University of London

10:50    Empowering communities through equity, inclusivity, and ethics

Chaired by Beth Montague-Hellen, Head of Library and Information Services at the Francis Crick Institute.

This session addresses the role of the communities in governance, explores the ethical implications of AI for citizens and highlights the value of public engagement, and discusses the central importance of equity, inclusivity, and integrity in scholarly communications.

• Community Power in AI. Jeni Tennison, Executive Director of Connected by Data
• Delivering a Community-led Open Infrastructure. Gillian Daly, Executive Officer, at the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL)
• Advancing Equity and Inclusivity through AI Ethics and Governance. Ann Borda, Ethics Fellow in the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute. (recorded presentation)

11:40  Break

12:10    Deepening partnership in skills development through shared values

Chaired by Kirsty Wallis, Head of Research Liaison at UCL.

This session explores initiatives that foster skills development in libraries with a cross sectoral approach and dives into the role of libraries to support communities in building resilience.

• Co-delivery: working with partners to create transformational services. Ed Jewel, President of Libraries Connected
• Digital Skills in Arts and Humanities (DISKAH): Deepening Skills and Engagement with Digital Infrastructures. Karina Rodriguez Echavarria, Reader at the University of Brighton
• Training & Skills Development at the DCC. Dominique Green, Research Data Specialist  (Training Lead) at the Digital Curation Centre, The University of Edinburgh

13:00  Lunch

13:45   Open repositories for research of all kinds

This session addresses the role of infrastructure to carry out open scholarship practices, explores the practice as research in the axis of diverse outputs and infrastructure, discusses institutional resilience in digital strategies. 

Chaired by William J Nixon, Deputy Executive Director at Research Libraries UK (RLUK).

• Connecting Art, Science, and Open Repositories @ The National Gallery​. Joseph Padfield, Principal Scientist at the National Gallery
• Back to the Future: European Repositories for the Era of Open Science. Eloy Rodrigues, Director at the University of Minho Libraries and Executive Board member at OpenAIRE
• COAR Notify: Supporting Next Generation Repositories. Paul Walk, Director at Antleaf Ltd

14:45  Break

15:15   Enabling collections as data: from policy to practice  

Chaired by Jez Cope, Data Services Lead at the British Library.

This session dives into the digital collections as data by exploring policies and practices across different sectors, public-private partnerships in making collections publicly available, dynamics in preservation versus access approach in national libraries whilst underlining the public good. 

• Developing Workflows to Publish Collections as Data. Gustavo Candela Romero, Assistant Professor at the University of Alicante
• Enabling collections as data: the Museum Data Service. Kevin Gosling, Chief Executive at the Collections Trust
• Exploring Collections as Data in the European context: current initiatives, future prospects. Sally Chambers, Head of Research Infrastructure Services at the British Library and Director of DARIAH-EU based at the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, Ghent University

16:15   Closing keynote: Stories Change Lives

Chaired by Liz White, Director of Library Partnerships at the British Library. 

• Erik Boekesteijn, Member of Board of Directors at the Storyhouse and Senior Advisor at the National Library of the Netherlands

16:45 Closing remarks

17:00 Networking session

19:00  End

The hashtag for the event is #OpenEngaged on social media platform of your choice. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].  

This blog post is by Dr Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Digital Curator for Asian and African Collections, British Library. She's on Mastodon as @[email protected]. 

Sustainability has become a core value at the British Library, driven by our staff-led Sustainability Group and bolstered by the addition of a dedicated Sustainability Manager nearly a year ago. As part of our ongoing commitment to environmental responsibility, we have been exploring various initiatives to reduce our environmental footprint. One such initiative is our engagement with the Digital Humanities Climate Coalition (DHCC), a collaborative and cross-institutional effort focused on understanding and minimising the environmental impact of digital humanities research.

Discovering the DHCC and its toolkit

The Digital Humanities Climate Coalition (DHCC) has been on my radar for some time, primarily due to their exemplary work in promoting sustainable digital practices. The DHCC toolkit, in particular, has proven to be an invaluable resource. Designed to help individuals and organisations make more environmentally conscious digital choices, the toolkit offers practical guidance for building sustainable digital humanities projects. It encourages researchers to adopt climate-responsible practices and supports those who may lack the practical knowledge to devise greener initiatives.

The toolkit is comprehensive, providing tips on the planning and management of research infrastructure and data. It aims to empower researchers to make climate-friendly technological decisions, thereby fostering a culture of sustainability within the digital humanities community.

My primary goal in leveraging the DHCC toolkit is to raise awareness about the environmental impact of digital work and technology use. By doing so, I hope to empower Library staff to make informed decisions that contribute to our sustainability goals. The toolkit’s insights are crucial for anyone involved in digital research, offering both strategic guidance and practical tips for minimising ecological footprints.

Planning a workshop at the British Library

With the support of our Research Development team, I organised a one-day workshop at the British Library, inviting Professor James Baker, Director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton and a member of the DHCC, to lead the event. The workshop was designed to introduce the DHCC toolkit and provide guidance on implementing best practices in research projects. The in-person, full-day workshop was held on 5 February 2024.

Workshop highlights

The workshop featured four key sessions:

Session 1: Introductions and Framing: We began with an overview of the DHCC and its work within the GLAM sector, followed by an introduction to sustainability at the British Library, the roles that libraries play in reducing carbon footprint and awareness raising, the Green Libraries Campaign (of which the British Library was a founding partner), and perspectives on digital humanities and the use of computational methods.

CILIP’s Green Libraries Campaign banner

Session 2: Toolkit Overview: Prof Baker introduced the DHCC toolkit, highlighting its main components and practical applications, focusing on grant writing (e.g. recommendations on designing research projects, including Data Management Plans), and working practices (guidance on reducing energy consumption in day-to-day working life, e.g. communication and shared working, travel, and publishing and preserving data). The session included responses from relevant Library teams, on topics such as research project design, data management and our shared research repository.

DHCC Information, Measurement and Practice Action Group. (2022). A Researcher Guide to Writing a Climate Justice Oriented Data Management Plan (v0.6). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6451499

Session 3: Advocacy and Influencing: This session focused on strategies for advocating for sustainable practices within one's organisation and influencing others to adopt these practices. We covered the Library’s staff-led Sustainability Group and its activities, after which participants were then asked to consider the actions that could be taken at the Library and beyond, taking into account the types of people that might be influenced (senior leaders, colleagues, peers in wider networks/community).

Session 4: Feedback and Next Steps: Participants discussed their takeaways from the workshop and identified actionable steps they could implement in their work. This session included conversations on ways to translate workshop learnings into concrete next steps, and generated light ‘commitments’ for the next week, month and year. One fun way to set oneself a yearly reminder is to schedule an eco-friendly e-card to send to yourself in a year!

Post-workshop follow-up

Three months after the workshop had taken place, we conducted a follow-up survey to gauge its impact. The survey included a mix of agree/disagree statements (see chart below) and optional long-form questions to capture more detailed feedback. While we had only a few responses, survey results were constructive and positive. Participants appreciated the practical insights and reported better awareness of sustainable practices in their digital work.

Participants’ agree/disagree ratings for a series of statements about the DHCC workshop’s impact

Judging from responses to the set of statements above, at least several participants have embedded toolkit recommendations, made specific changes in their work, shared knowledge and influenced their wider networks. We got additional details on these actions in responses to the open-ended questions that followed.

What did staff members say?

Here are some comments made in relation to making changes and embedding the DHCC toolkit’s recommendation:

“Changes made to working policy and practice to order vegetarian options as standard for events.”

“I have referenced the toolkit in a chapter submitted for a monograph, in relation to my BL/university research.”

“I have discussed the toolkit's recommendations with colleagues re the projects I am currently working on. We agreed which parts of the projects were most carbon intensive and discussed ways to mitigate that.”

“I recommended a workshop on the toolkit to my [research] funding body.”

“Have engaged more with small impacts - less email traffic, fewer attachments, fewer images.”

A couple of comments were made with regard to challenges or barriers to change making. One was about colleagues being reluctant to decrease flying, or travel in general, as a way to reduce one’s carbon footprint. The second point referred to an uncertainty on how to influence internal discussions on software development infrastructure – highlighting the challenge of finding the right path to the right people.

An interesting comment was made in relation to raising environmental concerns and advocating the Toolkit:

“Shared the toolkit with wider professional network at an event at which environmentally conscious and sustainable practices were raised without prompting. Toolkit was well received with expressions of relief that others are thinking along these lines and taking practical steps to help progress the agenda.”

And finally, an excellent point about the energy-intensive use of ChatGPT (or other LLMs), which was covered at the workshop:

“The thing that has stayed with me is what was said about water consumption needed to cool the supercomputers - how every time you run one of those Chat GPT (or equivalent) queries it is the equivalent of throwing a litre of water out the window, and that Microsoft's water use has gone up 30%. I've now been saying this every time someone tells me to use one of these GPT searches. To be honest it has put me off using them completely.”

In summary

The DHCC workshop at the British Library was a great success, underscoring the importance of sustainability in digital humanities, digital projects and digital working. By leveraging the DHCC toolkit, we have taken important steps toward making our digital practices more environmentally responsible, and spreading the word across internal and external networks. Moving forward, we will continue to build on this momentum, fostering a culture of sustainability and empowering our staff to make informed, climate-friendly decisions.

Thank you to workshop contributors, organisers and helpers:

James Baker, Joely Fake, Maja Maricevic, Catherine Ross, Andy Rackley, Jez Cope, Jenny Basford, Graeme Bentley, Stephen White, Bianca Miranda Cardoso, Sarah Kirk-Browne, Andrea Deri, and Deirdre Sullivan.

This is a joint blog post by Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives, Harry Lloyd, Research Software Engineer, and Rossitza Atanassova, Digital Curator.

This year’s Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic countries conference took place at the University of Iceland School of Education in Reykjavik. It was the eight conference which was established in 2016, but the first time it was held in Iceland. The theme for the conference was “From Experimentation to Experience: Lessons Learned from the Intersections between Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage”. There were pre-conference workshops from May 27-29 with the main conference starting on the afternoon of May 29 and finishing on May 31. In her excellent opening keynote Sally Chambers, Head of Research Infrastructure Services at the British Library, discussed the complex research and innovation data space for cultural heritage. Three British Library colleagues report highlights of their conference experience in this blog post.

Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives, Contemporary British & Irish Publications.

I presented in the Born Digital session held on May 28. There were four presentations in this session and three were related to web archiving and one related to Twitter (X) data. I co-presented ‘Understanding the Challenges for the Use of Web Archives in Academic Research’. This presentation examined the challenges for the use of web archives in academic research through a synthesis of the findings from two research studies that were published through the WARCnet research network. There was lots of discussion after the presentation on how web archives could be used as a research data management tool to help manage online citations in academic publications.

Helena presenting in the born-digital archives session

The conference programme was very strong and there were many takeaways that relate to my role. One strong theme was ‘collections as data’. At the UK Web Archive we have just started to publish some of our inactive curated collections as data. So these discussions were very useful. One highlight was the ‘Panel: Publication and reuse of digital collections: A GLAM Labs approach’. What stood out for me in this session was the checklist for publishing collections as data. It was very reassuring to see that we had pretty much everything covered for the release of the UK Web Archive datasets.

Rossitza and I were kindly offered a tour of the National and University Library of Iceland by Kristinn Sigurðsson, Head of Digital Projects and Development. We enjoyed meeting curatorial staff from the Special Collections who showed us some of the historical maps of Iceland that have been digitised. We also visited the digitisation studio to see how they process periodicals, and spoke to staff involved with web archiving. Thank you to Kristinn and his colleagues for this opportunity to learn about the library’s collections and digital services.

Rossitza and Helena outside the National and University Library of Iceland

The National and University Library of Iceland

Harry Lloyd, Research Software Engineer, Digital Research.

DHNB2024 was a rich conference from my perspective as a research software engineer. Sally Chambers’ opening keynote on Wednesday afternoon demonstrated an extraordinary grasp of the landscape of digital cultural heritage across the EU. By this point there had already been a day and a half of workshops, including a session Rossitza and I presented on Catalogues as Data. 

I spent the first half using a Jupyter notebook to explain how we extracted entries from an OCR’d version of the catalogue of the British Library’s collection of 15th century books. We used an explainable algorithm rather than a ‘black-box’ machine learning one, so we walked through the steps involved and discussed where it worked well and where it could be improved. You can follow along by clicking the ‘launch notebook’ button in the ReadMe here. 

Harry explaining text recognition results during the workshop

Handing over to Rossitza in the second half to discuss her corpus linguistic analysis worked really well by giving attendees a feel for the complete workflow. This really showed in some great conversations we had with attendees over the following days about tricky problems like where to store the ‘true’ results of OCR. 

A few highlights from the rest of the conference were Clelia LaMonica’s work using Latin large language model to analyse kinship in texts from Medieval Burgundy. Large language models trained on historic texts are important as the majority are trained on modern material and struggle with historical language. Jørgen Burchardt presented some refreshingly quantitative work on bias across a digitised newspaper collection, very reminiscent of work by Kaspar Beelen. Overall it was a productive few days, and I very much enjoyed my time in Reykjavik.

Rossitza Atanassova, Digital Curator, Digital Research.

This was my second DHNB conference and I was looking forward to reconnecting with the community of researchers and cultural heritage practitioners, some of whom I had met at DHNB2019 in Copenhagen. Apart from the informal discussions with attendees, I contributed to DHNB2024 in two main ways.

As already mentioned, Harry and I delivered a pre-conference workshop showcasing some processes and methodology we use for working with printed catalogues as data. In the session we used the corpus tool AntConc to perform computational analysis of the descriptions for the British Library’s collection of books published in the 15th century. You can find out more about the project here and reuse the workshop materials published on Zenodo here.

I also joined the pre-conference meeting of the international GLAM Labs Community held at the National and University Library of Iceland. This was the first in-person meeting of the community in five years and was a productive session during which we brainstormed ‘100 ideas for the GLAM Labs Community’. Afterwards we had a sneak peak of the archive of the National Theatre of Iceland which is being catalogued and digitised.

The main hall of the Library.

The DHNB community is so welcoming and supportive, and attracts many early career digital humanists. I was particularly interested to hear from doctoral students researching the use of AI with digitised archives, and using NLP methods with historical collections. One of the projects that stood out for me was Johannes Widegren’s PhD research into the ethical use of AI to enable access and discovery of Sami cultural heritage, and to develop library and archival practice. 

I was also interested in presentations that discussed workflows for creating Named Entity Recognition resources for historical archives and I plan to try out the open-source Label Studio tool that I learned about. And of course, the poster session is always a highlight and I enjoyed finding out about a range of projects, including computational analysis of Scandinavian runic-texts, digital reconstruction of Gothenburg’s 1923 Jubilee exhibition, and training large language models to track semantic variation in climate change vocabulary in Danish news articles.

The poster presentations session chaired by Olga Holownia

We are grateful to all DHNB24 organisers for the warm welcome and a great conference experience, with special thanks to the inspirational and indefatigable Olga Holownia!