Digital scholarship blog

“The bats have left the bell tower, the victims have been bled”  - Happy Friday the 13^th to those of you with gothic sensibilities! I’ve been enjoying singing along to the wonderful CHVRCHES cover of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” originally by Bauhaus, while preparing for the Gaming the Gothic conference, which takes place at the University of Sheffield today, and where @GamingTheGothic have promised both cake and badges!

I am giving a paper on the Off the Map videogame design competition, which accompanied the British Library’s exhibition ‘Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination’, which in 2014 celebrated 250 years of gothic literature and culture, starting from the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.

The Off The Map competition challenged higher education students based in the UK to create videogames inspired by the British Library’s collections and in 2014 three students from University of South Wales created a winning underwater game where the player rebuilds Fonthill Abbey, the once-stunning Gothic revival country house in Wiltshire home to author William Beckford, which was demolished in 1846 after the collapse of its spectacular 300-foot tower twenty years earlier.

Image from 2014 Off the Map winning game Nix

Image taken from "Delineations of Fonthill and its Abbey", by John Rutter; published by the author, 1823 (BL 191.e.6-81)

The winning team used images, maps of the estate and sounds held in the British Library’s collections to create Nix; a game for the first generation Oculus Rift, a revolutionary virtual reality headset for 3D gaming. Tim Pye, curator of the British Library’s exhibition Terror and Wonder, said this about their entry:

“What is so impressive about the Nix game is the way in which it takes the stunning architecture of the Abbey, combines it with elements from its troubled history and infuses it all with a very ghostly air. The game succeeds in transforming William Beckford’s stupendously Gothic building into a magical, mysterious place reminiscent of the best Gothic novels.”

Keeping the gothic flames burning in 2018 and to mark the 200^th year anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, the British Library’s Digital Scholarship team is pleased to be collaborating on Gothic Novel Jam with Read Watch Play; an online reading group that has monthly themes. Last year we partnered on Odyssey Jam and it was inspiring to see the end results, which I blogged about here.

To get involved in Gothic Novel Jam participants need to make something creative inspired by the gothic novel genre. Then by the 31st July upload or share it on the itch.io Gothic Novel Jam site. Entries can include stories, poetry, art, games, music, films, pictures, soundscapes, or any other type of digital media response.

Gothic Novel Jam, #GothNovJam, promotional postcard

As part of the jam we want participants to use images from the British Library Flickr account as inspiration for submissions. They’re freely available for anyone to use and the following albums may be particularly inspiring:

• Ghosts and Ghoulish scenes
• Architecture
• Castles
• Children's Book illustrations

However, don't feel limited to using just those images, the full list of albums can be found here. There are also the Off the Map Gothic Collections of images on Wikimedia Commons and sounds on SoundCloud, which you are free to use. If you want to learn more about the gothic genre and it's authors, check out this hugely informative section of the Discovering Literature website.

Although the gothic novel is the main jam theme, we’ll also be announcing a sub-theme on the 1^st July, so please follow the #GothNovJam hashtag on social media for more news and also to see what others are creating for the jam. Good luck and have fun!

Button badges made for the Gaming the Gothic conference, really hope I get a #CakeAndDeath one!

This post is by resident goth, Digital Curator Stella Wisdom, on twitter as @miss_wisdom.

It is currently the London Games Festival (30 March – 9 April 2017), which champions and showcases the cultural power of interactive entertainment in the capital. All sorts of exciting events are being held. Last week I attended a Games Culture Summit hosted by the British Council, which discussed the relationship of culture to games, including discussion of developing and supporting creative communities, arts practice and commercial development. I was pleased to hear Jo Summers speak in a session looking at skills for collaborating with cultural institutions, drawing on her experience of running WordPlay at the British Library in November 2016. Jo is also an organiser of Now Play This; an experimental game design showcase, running for the third time at Somerset House in London from 7-9 April, 2017, as part of the London Games Festival. 

Not to be left out, here at the British Library we are running a free festival fringe event, Off the Page: Literature and Games, on Saturday 8 April, 13:00 – 16:00 in the Knowledge Centre, exploring the overlap between literature and games. Looking at how the fictional worlds of our favourite novels and plays are represented in games and in return what games bring to the written word? We have invited a range of speakers to discuss this evolving landscape and inspiring projects; including myself talking about the Library's Off the Map competition, which challenged students to create Alice in Wonderland and Shakespearean themed games. The other speakers are:

• Jakub Szamalek , Senior Writer on The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt
• Jon Ingold of Inkle and writer of Heaven's Vault, and writer Meg Jayanth, 80 Days
• Jeremy Hogan, Kim based on the Rudyard Kipling novel
• Guy Gadney of To Play For, on adapting John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes and creating online AI thriller The Suspect
• Tom Battey speaking about his Off the Map entry, Midsummer
• Mika Golubovsky, joining us remotely to speak about Arzamas’s Emoji Poetry
• Gary Green, games in libraries and Odyssey Jam
• Darren Edwards, International Games Day @ your library, which for 2017 has become International Games Week!
• Tracey Fullerton, joining us remotely to speak about Walden, a game
• Christie Golden, New York Times bestselling author, joining us remotely to speak about writing novels for game franchises such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Assassin's Creed.

Places are free, but must be booked via: https://off_the_page.eventbrite.co.uk.

Look forward to seeing you there!

This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom, on twitter as @miss_wisdom.

Off the Page event, image taken from Off the Map 2016 winning game The Tempest by Team Quattro

Last night was the awards event at The National Videogame Arcade in Nottingham for the 2016 Off the Map competition, which had a Shakespeare theme. Now in its fourth year, Off the Map challenges full time UK students in higher or further education to make videogames, digital explorable environments, or interactive fiction based on digitised British Library collection items.

For 2016 the competition has been part of the British Library's commemoration of 400 years since the death of Shakespeare and has been running in conjunction with the Library’s recent exhibition “Shakespeare in Ten Acts”. Curators selected text, images, maps and sounds based on three sub themes:

• Castles: Scene of Ghosts and Murder
• The Tempest
• Forests, Woodlands and A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This year's fantastic first place winning entry used the The Tempest sub theme and was created by Team Quattro from De Montfort University in Leicester. The team consisted of six students: Chris Anka, Perrie Green, Tara Naz, Jade Silver, Jasdev Singh and Joel Wilkins.

The Tempest game logo

Team Quattro

 

Flythrough of Team Quattro’s ‘The Tempest’ game

Dr Erin Sullivan described the winning game as ‘an evocative, immersive world that powerfully channels the drama of The Tempest. It introduces players to the story of the play in a deep, thoughtful way.’

Dr Abigail Parry said ‘I was head-over-heels for the metatextual element of this submission – you had me at the stage door. It was good, too, to see source text daubed on the caves walls – for me, the greatest strength of the submission was that it succeeded in synthesising text, assets and game environment in a way that was both engaging and beautiful.  Also to be commended was the attention to detail – the prop storm clouds were a delight.  The individual domains were characterful, and the story welcome without being obtrusive.  Most of all, it displayed a real interest in – and affection for - the play. I would want to play this game, and would be equally proud to teach with it.’ 

In second place came Tom Battey from the London College of Communication with a game called ‘Midsummer’ based on the characters in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Dr Erin Sullivan describing 'Midsummer' said that ‘the visual world and the engagement with the play were extremely impressive. I loved the historical flourishes and the imaginative exploration of the characters’ emotions.’

Midsummer by Tom Battey

In third place was an interactive fiction story again using The Tempest sub theme called This Most Desolate Isle by Alan Stewart from Brunel University who effectively used illustrations by Arthur Rackham to accompany his creative writing.

This Most Desolate Isle by Alan Stewart

Huge congratulations to this year's winning entries, and I'd also like to offer sincere thanks to the 2016 Off the Map jury members:

• Sarah Ellis, Head of Digital Development at the Royal Shakespeare Company
• Dr Abigail Parry, Poet in Residence at the National Videogame Arcade
• Dr Erin Sullivan, Shakespeare Institute Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham
• Cheryl Tipp, Wildlife and Environmental Sounds Curator at the British Library
• Zoë Wilcox, Lead Curator of the Shakespeare Exhibition at the British Library

The 2017 competition is called There Will be Fun Off The Map and this is associated with the British Library’s current exhibition Victorian Entertainments: There Will Be Fun, which is open until Sunday 12 February 2017. Keep your eyes peeled for further information about this; I will be blogging here over the next few weeks, when the new  There Will be Fun Off The Map competition website is available.

Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator, @miss_wisdom

The @BL_Labs roadshow moves onto Cambridge and we still have a few places available for our FREE and open to all afternoon showcase event on Monday 15 February between 1.30pm - 4.30pm (booking essential). The event is kindly hosted by the Digital Humanities Network of researchers at the University Cambridge who are interested in how the use of digital tools is transforming scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

 
@BL_Labs Roadshow in Cambridge - Mon 15 Feb (0930 - 1230 and 1330 - 1630), hosted by the Digital Humanities Network at the University of Cambridge.

Building a search engine that works for you (9.30am - 12.30pm).

Building a search engine that works for you, Cambridge - Mon 15 Feb (9.30am - 12.30pm).

Led by British Library Labs Technical Lead Ben O'Steen, a special workshop will be held in the morning (9.30am - 12.30pm) which gets under the 'hood' of search engines. Attendees will load some texts from the largely 19th Century British Library digitised Book collection into a search engine to explore the problems, opportunities and assumptions made when creating such a service. The session will be using Elasticsearch, Python, Git and Notepad++.

The aim is to step people through the challenges and compromises required to have something as simple as a Google search service and to explore a few ways to tailor it to specific needs. It involves dealing with XML and the quality of real world data and use python code to put data into and query Elasticsearch. This 3-hour workshop will give participants an understanding of how search engines work from the inside. No technical knowledge is required as a prerequisite but spaces are strictly limited and the focus of this workshop will be on practical application of the ideas. University of Cambridge researchers and students have priority for bookings however you can now book here. However, please contact Anne Alexander to see if there have been any last minute cancelations, especially if you are from outside the University and would like to attend.

Labs and Digital Research Showcase with an 'Ideas Lab' (1.30pm-4.30pm).

The showcase in the afternoon (1.30pm-4.30pm) will provide participants an opportunity to:

• Understand what Digital Research activity is being carried out at the British Library.
• Discover the digital collections the British Library has, understand some of the challenges of using them and even take some away with you.
• Learn how researchers found and revived forgotten Victorian jokes and Political meetings from our digital archives.
• Understand how special games and computer code have been developed to help tag un-described images and make new art.
• Find out about a tool that links digitised handwritten manuscripts to transcribed texts and one that creates statistically representative samples from the British Library’s book collections.
• Consider how the intuitions of a DJ could be used to mix and perform the Library's digital collections.
• Talk to Library staff about how you might use some of the Library's digital content innovatively.
• Get advice, pick up tips and feedback on your ideas and projects for the 2016 BL Labs Competition (deadline 11 April) and Awards (deadline 5 September).

For more information about the afternoon session, a detailed programme and to book your place, visit the Labs & Digital Research Showcase with an 'Ideas Lab' event page.

Posted by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs.

The BL Labs project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Do you live in or near Nottingham and are you available on Wednesday 3 Feb between 1230 - 1600? Come along to the FREE UK @BL_Labs Roadshow event at GameCity and The National Video Game Arcade, Nottingham (we have some places left and booking is essential for anyone interested).

BL Labs Roadshow at GameCity and The National Video Game Arcade, Nottingham, hosted by the Digital Humanities and Arts (DHA) Praxis project based at the University of Nottingham, Wed 3 Feb (1230 - 1600)

• Discover the digital collections the British Library has, understand some of the challenges of using them and even take some away with you.
• Learn how researchers found and revived forgotten Victorian jokes and Political meetings from our digital archives.
• Understand how special games and computer code have been developed to help tag un-described images and make new art.
• Find out about a tool that links digitised handwritten manuscripts to transcribed texts and one that creates statistically representative samples from the British Library’s book collections.
• Consider how the intuitions of a DJ could be used to mix and perform the Library's digital collections.
• Talk to Library staff about how you might use some of the Library's digital content innovatively.
• Get advice, pick up tips and feedback on your ideas and projects for the 2016 BL Labs Competition (deadline 11 April) and Awards (deadline 5 September). 

Our hosts are the Digital Humanities and Arts (DHA) Praxis project at the University of Nottingham who are kindly providing food and refreshments and will be talking about two amazing projects they have been involved in:

ArtMaps: Putting the Tate Collection on the map

Dr Laura Carletti will be talking about the ArtMaps project which is getting the public to accurately tag the locations of the Tate's 70,000 artworks.

The 'Wander Anywhere' free mobile app developed by Dr Benjamin Bedwell.

Dr Benjamin Bedwell, Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham will talk about the free mobile app he developed called 'Wander Anywhere'.  The mobile software offers users new ways to experience art, culture and history by guiding them to locations where it downloads stories intersecting art, local history, architecture and anecdotes on their mobile device relevant to where they are.

For more information, a detailed programme and to book your place, visit the Labs and Digital Humanities and Arts Praxis Workshop event page.

Posted by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs.

The BL Labs project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Labs Roadshow at #citylis London, Mon 1 Feb (5pm-7.30pm)

Live in or near North-East London and are available on Monday 1 Feb between 1700 - 1930? Come along to the first FREE UK Labs Roadshow event of 2016 (we have a few places left and booking is essential for anyone interested) and:

#citylis at the Department for Information Science, City University London,
the first BL Labs Roadshow event Mon 1 Feb (1700 - 1930)

• Discover the digital collections the British Library has, understand some of the challenges of using them and even take some away with you.
• Learn how researchers found and revived forgotten Victorian jokes and Political meetings from our digital archives.
• Understand how special games and computer code have been developed to help tag un-described images and make new art.
• Talk to Library staff about how you might use some of the Library's digital content innovatively.
• Get advice, pick up tips and feedback on your ideas and projects for the 2016 BL Labs Competition (deadline 11 April) and Awards (deadline 5 September). 

Our first hosts are the Department for Information Science (#citylis) at City University London. #citylis have kindly organised some refreshments, nibbles and also an exciting student discussion panel about their experiences of working on digital projects at the British Library, who are:

#citylis student panel.
Top-left, Ludi Price 
Top-right, Dimitra Charalampidou
Bottom-left, Alison Pope
Bottom-right, Daniel van Strien

• Ludi Price, a PhD student in Information Science at the university who works as a Far Eastern Languages cataloguer at the SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on the digital information behaviour of fans and fan practices in the library world and she will talk about participating in the International Games Day at your Library, held at the British Library.
• Dimitra Charalampidou, a graduate of Library Science and Information Systems at the Alexander Technological Institute of Thessalonki (A.Te.I.Th.), Greece and a British Library Labs Erasmus funded trainee (2015). Her work included uploading over 9000 digitised bookbindings to Wikimedia Commons (see also Untold lives blog posting - 'Spell Binding') as part of her dissertation and supporting the Crossroads of Curiosity project and event with artist David Normal.
• Alison Pope, a recent student of Information Science at #citylis with a particular interest in digital information technology architectures, data visualisation and sport informatics. She is a Business Analyst in Information Technology Services at the University of Reading and has worked with researchers on a variety of digital scholarship projects.
• Daniel van Strien, a #citylis student who also works as an Assistant Librarian at Newcomb Library, Homerton University Hospital. He has recently worked on research around funders who are moving to open access and facilitated a workshop on ‘Library Carpentry’ at City teaching Librarians how to use version control.

For more information, a detailed programme and to book your place (essential), visit the BL Labs Workshop at #citylis event page.

Posted by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs.

The BL Labs project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Do you want to learn more about the digital collections the British Library has? Discover how others have used them in creative and surprising ways? Talk to Library staff and understand some of the challenges of how you might use our digital content innovatively. Get advice, pick up tips and consider entering your own ideas and projects into the Labs Competition (deadline 11 April) and Awards (deadline 5 September). You can browse our archive of ideas submitted for competitions and awards here.

Come to one of our 15 UK events as part of the @BL_Labs Roadshow between Feb 1 to April 4 2016. Events will include presentations from the British Library and host institutions, practical hands-on workshops, a chance to explore and discuss what you may do with some of the Library's data through an 'Ideas Lab' and for you to speak and get feedback from experts.

Register for a FREE event and OPEN TO ALL (unless otherwise stated). Further details about locations see below: 

Locations in the UK where members of the Digital Scholarship team will be visiting between Feb-April 2016.

February

• Mon 1 Feb (1700 - 1930) - Experimenting with Digital Collections: BL Labs Workshop at #citylis, Centre for Information Science (#citylis), City University London, London
• Wed 3 Feb (1200 - 1600) - Labs and Digital Humanities and Arts Praxis Workshop, National Video Arcade, organised by the University of Nottingham, Nottingham
• Mon 15 Feb (0930 - 1230) - Building a search engine that works for you, Cambridge Digital Humanities Network, University Cambridge, Cambridge
• Mon 15 Feb (1330 - 1630) - Labs & Digital Research Showcase with an 'Ideas Lab', Cambridge Digital Humanities Network, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
• Tue 23 Feb (1300 - 1700) - BL Labs Roadshow @ Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange (CAKE), Digital Humanities Hub, University of Birmingham, Birmingham
• Wed 24 Feb (1400 - 1700) - Using British Library’s Digital Content and Data for your research, University College London Digital Humanities department (UCLDH), UCL, London
• Fri 26 Feb (1300 - 1700) - Labs Showcase at Digital Humanities Network Scotland, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh
• Mon 29 Feb (1200 - 1500) - BL Labs Roadshow @ OU, Open University, Milton Keynes

March

• Thu 3 Mar (1230 - 1700) - BL Labs Wales Roadshow, National Library of Wales and Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth
• Fri 4 Mar (1300 - 1700) - Experimenting with the British Library's Digital Content, University of Wolverhampton’s Directorate of Academic Support and Faculty of Social Sciences, Wolverhampton
• Mon 7 Mar (1300 - 1700) - BL Labs and Spatial Humanities @ Lancaster University, Lancaster University, Lancaster
• Wed 9 Mar (1130 - 1600) - Innovation, Experimentation, Collaboration: Exploring Digital Collections & Data @ the British Library, University of East Anglia, Norwich
• Mon 14 (1030 - 1630) - BL Labs Roadshow at KDL, King's Digital Lab, Kings' College London, London
• Fri 18 (1100 - 1500) - Experimenting with the British Library’s Digital Content and Data for your research, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield
• Mon 21 (1000 - 1500) - BL Labs Roadshow at GW4, University of Bristol on behalf of GW4 (South West and Wales - University of Bath, University of Cardiff, University of Bristol and the University of Exeter), Bristol
• Mon 21 (1900 - 2030) - British Library's Digital Content and Open Data, organised by South West Data Meetup, Bristol Engine Shed @ Temple Meads, Bristol

April

• Mon 4 (1030 - 1600) - BL Labs at Sussex Humanities Lab, Sussex Humanities Lab and the University of Sussex, Falmer near Brighton

For any further questions please contact us at [email protected].

The British Library Labs project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Posted by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs.

Today the Labs team is launching the fourth annual Competition and Awards for 2016. Please help us spread the word by tweeting, re-blogging, and telling anyone who might be interested!

British Library Labs Competition 2016

The annual Competition is looking for transformative project ideas which use the British Library’s digital collections and data in new and exciting ways. Two Labs Competition finalists will be selected to work 'in residence' with the BL Labs team between May and early November 2016, where they will get expert help, access to the Library’s resources and financial support to realise their projects.

Winners will receive a first prize of £3000 and runners up £1000 courtesy of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation at the Labs Symposium on 7th November 2016 at the British Library in London where they will showcase their work.

The deadline for entering is midnight British Summer Time (BST) on 11th April 2016.

Labs Competition winners from previous years have produced an amazing range of creative and innovative projects. For example:

(Top-left) Adam Crymble's Crowdsource Arcade and some specially developed games to help with tagging images
(Bottom-left) Katrina Navickas' Political Meetings Mapper and a photo from a Chartist re-enactment 
(Right) Bob Nicholson's Mechanical Comedian

• Adam Crymble's 'Crowdsourcing Arcade' (2015) experimented with crowdsourcing, specifically the tagging of the British Library's Flickr Commons images, through the use of a 1980s-style arcade game machine installed with specially designed games to help with tagging images.
• Katrina Navickas’ 'Political Meetings Mapper' (2015) used text mining and geo-location to find records of when and where political meetings took place in the Library's digitised newspapers, enabling anyone to access them on maps and explore the data on an interactive website.
• Bob Nicholson’s Victorian Meme Machine (2014) created a database of Victorian jokes from the Library's digital archives and reviving this humour through social media such as twitter and via the 'Mechanical Comedian'.

A further range of inspiring and creative ideas have been submitted in previous years and some have been developed further.

British Library Labs Awards 2016

The annual Awards, introduced in 2015, formally recognises outstanding and innovative work that has been carried out using the British Library’s digital collections and data. This year, they will be commending work in four key areas:

• Research - A project or activity which shows the development of new knowledge, research methods, or tools.
• Commercial - An activity that delivers or develops commercial value in the context of new products, tools, or services that build on, incorporate, or enhance the Library's digital content.
• Artistic - An artistic or creative endeavour which inspires, stimulates, amazes and provokes.
• Teaching / Learning - Quality learning experiences created for learners of any age and ability that use the Library's digital content.

A prize of £500 will be awarded to the winner and £100 for the runner up for each category at the Labs Symposium on 7th November 2016 at the British Library in London, again courtesy of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The deadline for entering is midnight BST on 5th September 2016.

The Awards winners for 2015 produced a remarkable and varied collection of innovative projects in  Research, Creative/Artistic, Entrepreneurship categories and a special Jury's prize:

(Top-left) Spatial Humanities research group at the University Lancaster plotting mentions of disease in newspapers on a map in Victorian times,
(Top-right) A computer generated work of art, part of 'The Order of Things' by Mario Klingemann,
(Bottom-left) A bow tie made by Dina Malkova inspired by a digitised original manuscript of Alice in Wonderland
(Bottom-right) Work on Geo-referencing maps discovered from a collection of digitised books at the British Library that James Heald is still involved in.

• Research: “Representation of disease in 19th century newspapers” by the Spatial Humanities research group at Lancaster University analysed the British Library's digitised London based newspaper, The Era through innovative and varied selections of qualitative and quantitative methods in order to determine how, when and where the Victorian era discussed disease.
• Creative / Artistic:  “The Order of Things” by Mario Klingemann involved the use of semi-automated image classification and machine learning techniques in order to add meaningful tags to the British Library’s one million Flickr Commons images, creating thematic collections as well as new works of art.
• Entrepreneurship: “Redesigning Alice” by Dina Malkova produced a range of bow ties and other gift products inspired by the incredible illustrations from a digitised British Library original manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground by Lewis Carroll and sold them through the Etsy platform and in the Alice Pop up shop at the British Library in London.
• Jury's Special Mention: Indexing the BL 1 million and Mapping the Maps by volunteer James Heald describes both the work he has led and his collaboration with others to produce an index of 1 million 'Mechanical Curator collection' images on Wikimedia Commons from the British Library Flickr Commons images. This gave rise to finding 50,000 maps within this collection partially through a map-tag-a-thon which are now being geo-referenced.

A further range of inspiring work has been carried out with the British Library's digital content and collections.

If you are thinking of entering, please make sure you visit our Competition and Awards archive pages for further details.

Finally, if you have a specific question that can't be answered through these pages, feel free to contact us at [email protected], or why not come to one of the 'BL Labs Roadshow 2016' UK events we have scheduled between February and April 2016 to learn more about our digital collections and discuss your ideas?

We really look forward to reading your entries!

Posted by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of British Library Labs.

The British Library Labs project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.