At the beginning of this month, I began a work placement with the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme (EAP). The EAP hosted a group of University College London students for several projects, and I was working to further connect EAP collections with Wikimedia. We were able to tailor the project to our interests, which meant that I was able to spend my placement researching and writing about two pioneering women photographers, Marie-Lydie Bonfils (EAP644) and Annemarie Heinrich (EAP755).

Creating a Wikipedia article

I began with Marie-Lydie Bonfils (1837–1918), an early woman photographer and co-owner of the Maison Bonfils studio in Beirut. The Bonfils family archive was digitised in a 2013 project between the EAP and the Jafet Memorial Library, American University of Beirut, and the physical archive is currently preserved at the Sursock Museum.

Perhaps unsurprisingly to those interested in women’s history, while her husband, Félix Bonfils, already had his own Wikipedia article, Marie-Lydie did not. So, I created a new article for her, adding to Félix’s along the way as well. I worked from as many biographical sources as I could possibly access online, including the excellent EAP blog post on Marie-Lydie.

Marie-Lydie Cabanis Bonfils' Wikipedia entry

Wikipedia’s notability criteria were a concern for me when publishing. Topics on Wikipedia must be considered “notable” to avoid needless and self-promotional content. This can have the unintended consequence of noteworthy articles being removed if they are not able to demonstrate their significance to other users. Balancing the objective language of Wikipedia with the need to persuade others of Marie-Lydie’s importance was something I had to be careful of when writing the text.

Once published, the article was given a C rating, which shows room for improvement and expansion. As I was waiting in suspense to see if the article would be removed entirely, a C was really quite exciting! Wikipedia articles are ongoing, collaborative projects rather than the completed essays that I am more used to in my studies. This has encouraged me to have a different and more productive mindset about my work more broadly.

Editing a Wikipedia article

Next, I began to look into Annemarie Heinrich (1912–2005). A German photographer who lived most of her life in Argentina, Heinrich was particularly famous for her celebrity portraits, such as those of Carmen Miranda, Pablo Neruda and Eva Perón. Her archive was added to the EAP collections in 2016, in a project with the Institute for Research in Art and Culture, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina. I expanded upon Heinrich’s short existing Wikipedia article.

On beginning my research, I discovered that her article on Spanish Wikipedia was much more extensive. This provided a useful starting point for biographical information and tracking down additional citations (thank you GCSE Spanish!). Heinrich’s lack of recognition on the English-speaking web made research difficult, but also highlighted the importance of adding more information about her onto English Wikipedia.

A portrait of Annemarie Heinrich, date unknown. Public Domain.

Wrapping my head around Wikidata

I was also introduced to Wikidata on my placement, another of Wikimedia’s projects consisting of open linked data and a completely unknown field to me. On the placement, we were able to attend the IFLA Wikidata and Wikibase Working Group office hour. The thought-provoking whistle-stop tour of the platform that we were given in this meeting had me creating an account immediately after closing the Zoom call tab.

Wikidata logo, Public Domain.,

As expected due to their Wikipedia articles, Félix Bonfils and Annemarie Heinrich had Wikidata item entries already, but so did Marie-Lydie, their son, Adrien, and Maison Bonfils. This is likely because of the generally less intensive notability criteria on Wikidata.

I did have a few challenges with Wikidata over my second week. One arose when I tried to add the EAP to the Bonfils’ items. Adrien Bonfils had an existing property for “has works in the collection”, with museums and galleries listed, so I added the EAP to this section. However, on looking at a similar artist’s item entry, I found that there is also a property for “archives at” that might better apply.

Wikidata entry for the Bonfils Collection

Seeing this, I not only realised that I might have used the wrong category, but also that there might be others that were more relevant that I just hadn’t seen yet! Being able to search for each qualifier allows for a flexible and tailored user experience but, for a newbie, the amount of choice can be a bit overwhelming! The upside is that Wikidata is quite forgiving, with changes easily made and explanatory symbols popping up when the system recognises a mistake (as can be seen in the image below).

Amended Wikidata entry for the Bonfils Collection on Wikidata

To sum up, researching the lives and careers of these women photographers from the EAP collections has been fascinating. It has been so rewarding to help to increase their online discoverability, and that of the EAP.

Working remotely, this placement was bound to be unusual in some ways, but the BL team was really welcoming and encouraged us all to ask lots of questions (which I absolutely did!). I have learnt a lot about Wikimedia in these few weeks and I will definitely continue exploring and making edits in the future.

This is a guest post by UCL Archives and Records Management MA student and recent Wiki convert, Hope Lowther (@hopelowther)

BL/QFP Project celebrates two million images on the Qatar Digital Library and the creative ways we have used them.

This week we are celebrating a milestone achievement of two million images digitised and uploaded to the Qatar Digital Library (QDL). In addition to this bilingual, digital archive, the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership Project (BL/QFP Project) has also inspired creative and innovative pursuits. The material on the QDL is available to use and reuse, which allows for a wide variety of responses. Over the last few years, our Project’s diverse team has explored and demonstrated a multitude of ways to engage with these digital materials, including events, artwork, coding, and analysis.

The BL/QFP Project’s staff are skilled, experienced, and dedicated. They include cataloguers, historians, archivists, imaging specialists, conservators, translators, editors, and administrative support. This means that in one team (ordinarily housed in one office) we have a diverse pool of people, which has inspired some amazing interactions and ideas. Our skills range from photography, graphic design, and technology, to linguistics, history, and data analysis. By sharing and combining these talents, we have been able to engage with the digital material and resources in remarkable ways. We have all enjoyed learning about new areas, sharing skills and knowledge, engaging with fascinating materials, finding new ways of doing things, and collaborating with a range of people, such as the BL BAME Network and other partners.

Some of the work produced outside of our core deliverables is displayed below.

 

Hack Days

Hack Days are an opportunity to use innovative techniques to explore and respond to BL collections. The first BL/QFP Imaging Hack Day was held in October 2018, and led to an array of varied responses from our Imaging Team who used their skills to "hack" the QDL. Subsequent Hack Days have incorporated diverse topics, formats, collections, and participants. They are also award winning: the concept led by the Imaging Team won the British Library Labs Staff Award in 2019.

Figure 1: Poster for Hack Day created using images from manuscripts on the QDL

 

Figure 2: Astrolabe created by Darran Murray (Digitisation Studio Manager) using Or 2411

 

Figure 3: Example of images created to respond to the weaponry on the walls by Hannah Nagle (Senior Imaging Support Technician)

 

Figure 4: Social media banner created by Rebecca Harris (Senior Imaging Technician) for International Women’s Day

 

Figure 5: Imaging contrast showing insect damage to manuscript, ‘Four treatises on Astronomy’ (Or 8415), created by Renata Kaminska (Digitisation Studio Manager)

 

Figure 6: Behind the scenes visualisations including conservation treatment, created by Sotirios Alpanis (former Head of Digital Operations) and Jordi Clopes-Masjuan (Senior Imaging Technician)

 

Figure 7: Visual narratives made by combining digital images by Melanie Taylor (Senior Imaging Support Technician)

 

Figure 8: Colourisation of the portrait of the Sharif of Mecca, from 1781.b.6/7, using historically accurate colours by Daniel Loveday (Senior Imaging Technician)

 

Figure 9: Exquisite Corpse image created by collaging material from different images, including manuscripts from the QDL as well as BL Flickr and Instagram. By Morgane Lirette (Conservator (Books), Conservation), Tan Wang-Ward (Project Manager, Lotus Sutra Manuscripts Digitisation), Matthew Lee (Imaging Support Technician), Darran Murray (Digitisation Studio Manager), Noemi Ortega-Raventos (Content Specialist, Archivist). Exquisite Corpse: Head part 1 (QDL), Head part 2 (QDL), Head part 3 (QDL), Head part 4 (QDL) Head part 5 (QDL), torso (Flickr), legs (Flickr), feet (Instagram)

 

Cyanotype Workshops

Matt Lee (Senior Imaging Support Technician), Daniel Loveday (Senior Imaging Technician) and the Imaging Team

Members of the Imaging team have since gone on to develop cyanotype workshops. The photographic printing process of cyanotype uses chemicals and ultraviolet light to create a copy of an image. The team led experiments on the process at one of the Project’s Staff Away Days. After its success, the concept was developed further and workshops were delivered to students at the Camberwell College of Arts. Images from manuscripts on the QDL were used to create cyanotype collages like those displayed below.

Figure 10: Cyanotype created using collage of images from the QDL, by Matt Lee (Senior Imaging Support Technician)

 

Figure 11: Cyanotype created using collage of images from the QDL, by Louis Allday (Gulf History Cataloguing Manager)

 

Watermarks Project

Jordi Clopes-Masjuan (Senior Imaging Technician), Camille Dekeyser (Conservator), Matt Lee (Senior Imaging Support Technician), Heather Murphy (Conservation Team Leader)

The Watermarks Project is an ongoing collaboration between the Conservation and Imaging Teams. Together they have sought to examine and display watermarks found in our collection items. Starting with the physical items, and figuring out how best to capture them, they have experimented with ways to display the watermarks digitally. The process requires many forms of expertise, but the results facilitate the study and appreciation of the designs.

Figure 12: Studio setup for capturing the watermarks

 

Figure 13: Gif image showing traditional and translucid view with watermark highlighted by digital tracing.

 

Addressing Problematic Terms in our Catalogues and Translations Project

Serim Abboushi (Arabic & English Web Content Editor), Mariam Aboelezz (Translation Support Officer), Louis Allday (Gulf History Cataloguing Manager), Sotirios Alpanis (former Head of Digital Operations), John Casey (Cataloguer, Gulf History), David Fitzpatrick (Content Specialist, Archivist), Susannah Gillard (Content Specialist, Archivist), John Hayhurst (Content Specialist, Gulf History), Julia Ihnatowicz (Translation Specialist), William Monk (Cataloguer, Gulf History), Hannah Nagle (Senior Imaging Support Technician), Noemi Ortega-Raventos (Content Specialist, Archivist), Francis Owtram (Content Specialist, Gulf History), Curstaidh Reid (Cataloguer, Gulf History), George Samaan (Translation Support Officer), Tahani Shaban (Translation Specialist), David Woodbridge (Cataloguer, Gulf History), Nariman Youssef (Arabic Translation Manager) and special thanks to the BL BAME Staff Network.

The Addressing Problematic Terms in our Catalogues and Translations Project was joint winner of the 2020 BL Labs Staff Award. It is an ongoing, highly collaborative project inspired by a talk given by Dr Melissa Bennett about decolonising the archive and how to deal with problematic terms found in archive items. Using existing translation tools and a custom-built python script, the group has been analysing terms that appear in the original language of the documents, and assessing how best to address them in both English and Arabic. This work enables the project to treat problematic terms sensitively and to contextualise them in our catalogue descriptions and translations.

 

More projects

The work continues with projects that explore how to use and share different methods and technologies. For example, Hannah Nagle has taught us how to collage using digital images (How to make art when we’re working apart), Ellis Meade has created a Bitsy game based in the Qatar National Library that draws you inside a manuscript (‘Hidden world of the Qatar National Library’), and Dr Mariam Aboelezz has used the BL/QFP Translation Memory to analyse how we were using the Arabic Verb Form X (istafʿal) in our translations of catalogue descriptions (‘Investigating Instances of Arabic Verb Form X in the BL/QFP Translation Memory’).

Figure 14: Image of the Qatar National Library using Bitsy from ‘Hidden world of the Qatar National Library’ by Ellis Meade (Senior Imaging Technician)

 

We have also made the most of the Covid-19 restrictions and working from home, to share and learn skills such as coding, Arabic language, and photography. For example, through the Project’s ‘Code Club’, many of us have learnt about python and have written scripts to streamline our tasks. Furthermore, codes to explore the collections have also had creative outputs, such as Anne Courtney’s project “Making data into sound” (Runner-up, BL Labs Staff Awards, 2020).

The Project’s extraordinary collaborative work demonstrates some of the exciting and innovative ways to engage with library and archival collections. It also makes clear the wider benefits of digitisation and providing free online access to fully bilingual catalogued resources.

You can read about some of our projects in more detail in the blog posts below:

• ‘Making watermarks visible’ by Heather Murphy, Jordi Clopes-Masjuan and Matt Lee - https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2020/06/making-watermarks-visible-a-collaborative-project-between-conservation-and-imaging.html
• ‘Making data into sound’ by Anne Courtney - https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2020/09/making-data-into-sound.html
• ‘How to make art when we’re working apart’ by Hannah Nagle - https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2020/05/how-to-make-art-when-were-working-apart.html
• ‘Investigating Instances of Arabic Verb Form X in the BL/QFP Translation Memory’ by Mariam Aboelezz - https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2021/02/investigating-instances-of-arabic-verb-form-x-in-the-blqfp-translation-memory.html

You can read about previous BL/QFP Hack Days in the blog posts below:

• BL/QFP Imaging Hack Day (Part 1) - https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2018/11/the-british-library-qatar-foundation-partnership-imaging-hack-day.html
• BL/QFP Imaging Hack Day (Part 2) - https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2019/02/the-british-library-qatar-foundation-partnership-imaging-hack-day-part-2.html
• BL/QFP Imaging Hack Day: International Women’s Day - https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2019/03/the-british-library-qatar-national-library-partnership-imaging-hack-day-international-womens-day.html
• BL/QFP Project Hack Day: Collaboration - https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2019/11/the-british-library-qatar-foundation-partnership-project-hack-day-theme-collaboration.html
• BL/QFP Project & BL BAME Network Hack Day - https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2021/01/hacking-the-bl-from-home.html

This is a guest post by the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership Project, compiled by Laura Parsons. You can follow the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership on Twitter at @BLQatar.

The Urban Tree Festival got off to an active start on Saturday, including launch events for our tree themed Wikipedia edit-thon and our Games in the Woods game jam. If editing Wikipedia to add and improve articles about trees sounds like your jam, please do join our Urban Tree Wikithon dashboard (passcode: vmqytwdr) if you haven't already, so your edits will count towards our stats for #wiktreepedia tracked activity. However, if making games and writing interactive stories is more up your tree-lined avenue, then read on.

Games In the Woods is an online jam running all this week, until midnight on Sunday 23rd May. You are welcome to join alone or in a team to create digital and analogue games, interactive fiction, web comics, board games, escape games, card games – anything you want! We especially encourage creative re-use of images from the British Library’s Flickr collection of digitised 19th century books, do check out these online Flora and Fauna galleries. There is also a fabulous curated selection of wildlife and environmental sound recordings picked by Cheryl Tipp, available via this SoundCloud playlist, which you can use in your creations. 

At the jam's launch event, Ash Green gave a brilliant Bitsy tutorial (we blogged about Bitsy last week), and Marion Tessier shared our Games in the Woods Luography and tree themed BoardGameGeek Geeklist, as we appreciate not everyone may want to make games, but lots of people enjoy playing them. If you have a favourite game about trees, please do tell us.

We also provided an introduction to Twine, which is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories. Slides from the launch event can be found here and here.

To get an idea of what you can do with Twine, we suggest reading some free tree themed interactive stories, which others have created using the tool. Both The Old Woman in the Wood and Through the Woods Demo are part of an itch.io collection of tree themed games on itch.io that we have curated to inspire Games in the Woods jam participants.

On Saturday we also watched this useful video; Making Interactive Fiction with Twine, by Matt Allen from Closed Forum, which explains:

• Folder structures
• Making passages and links
• Hidden passage links
• Background, fonts and font size
• Style sheets
• Adding images, music and video
• Timed text and timed links
• Variables and if else statements

If you are interested in trying out Twine to write an interactive story, then these online resources can help you to get started:

• The Twine Cookbook, which contains documentation, tips, and examples for using Twine
• A Total Beginner’s Guide to Twine 2.1 by Adam Hammond, which includes these useful videos:
  • Getting Started With Twine 2.1
  • Make Your Twine 2.1 Game Look Awesome with CSS (SugarCube 2)
  • Adding Images and Music to Your Twine 2.1 Game (SugarCube 2)
  • Variables, Conditionals, and Programming in Twine 2.1 (SugarCube 2)
• A Total Beginner’s Guide to HTML and CSS by Adam Hammond
• Twine for Beginners by Damon L. Wakes
• The Twine® Grimoire, Vol. 1, by G.C. Baccaris
• Video showing how to Publish Your Twine Game to Itch.io, by Eric Guadara

If you're new to using itch.io and participating in game jams, below is some advice about uploading and sharing your game. If you've created a game that is saved as a html file you can upload and allow people to play it on itch.io in their web browser, rather than getting people to download the file to play it. Both Bitsy and Twine, which we featured in the launch event save the games they produce as html files. To get the game to play in the browser tick the "This game will be played in the Browser" box underneath the filename you uploaded. If it's a game that can't be run in the browser leave the "This game will be played in the browser" box unticked.

When you upload a file and edit the game information page, it defaults to saving the page in draft. To publish it so everyone can see and play or download your game, select the "public" option under "visibility & access". To submit your game to the Games in the Woods game jam:

• Upload your game
• Then click on the Submit your project button
• Then select your game from the drop-down list that appears
• Click Submit

Good luck and have fun, we are looking forward to seeing, reading and playing your games.

This post is by Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom) with input from Ash Green (@ggnewed), Cheryl Tipp (@CherylTipp) and Marion Tessier from Kingston Libraries (@kinglibheritage).

We could not be more excited about the upcoming Urban Tree Festival and our Wikithon. If you’d like to join in the fun, there’s plenty of time! Come along to our online event on Saturday 15th May at 11:00 BST for free training and information. You do not need any prior Wikipedia experience and we have nurtured a forest of useful resources to share with you.

If you’d like to get a head start, you can read our handy guide to setting up your Wikipedia account. There is advice on creating your account, Wikipedia's username policy and how to create your user page.

Once you have done that, or if you already have a Wikipedia account, please join our Urban Tree Wikithon dashboard (the enrollment passcode is vmqytwdr) and go through the introductory exercises, which cover:

• Wikipedia Essentials
• Editing Basics
• Evaluating Articles and Sources
• Contributing Images and Media Files
• Sandboxes and Mainspace
• Sources and Citations
• Plagiarism

These exercises aren’t time consuming – it’s definitely not an Entmoot situation – and they will help you prepare for editing Wikipedia during the Urban Tree Festival.

The easiest and swiftest way to verify your Wikipedia account is to do 10 small edits, one way to do this is to find articles where citations are needed, and add them via Citation Hunt (please make sure you are logged in for this!). For further information on adding citations, this video may be useful.

Treebeard and Hobbits, by Tom Loback, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

While it’s nice to be prepared, we understand that life is hectic and we are all busy bees, so if you don’t have a chance to do these activities in advance, it’s no problem. We will provide instructions on how to start from scratch at the session this Saturday.

Absolutely anyone can edit Wikipedia, and we can’t wait to help you on your way.

‘Tree’ you later!

This post is by Wikimedian in Residence Lucy Hinnie (@BL_Wikimedian) & Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom). Embedded videos are by Ewan McAndrew (@emcandre), Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.

Our Games in the Woods jam, which is part of this year's Urban Tree Festival, launches on 15th May, and will run for just over a week - finishing on 23rd May. As part of the jam's launch, we are running an online event to inspire participants and highlight free digital resources, which can be used to create a game, including visuals, audio, and online game making tools.

We love the idea of encouraging people who aren’t programmers and coders to participate in game jams, so we are also highlighting and giving a run through of some no-coding game making tools such as Bitsy.

Bitsy is a free tool created by Adam Le Doux which enables people to create games with an early 1980s retro aesthetic by drawing objects (static scenery tiles, character sprites or object items you can interact with) which are 8 by 8 pixels in size. These objects can be added to the play area, and the play area consists of at least one 128 by 128 pixel sized “room” (you can have hundreds of individual rooms all interconnected if you want). You can add dialogue and variables such as scores to the sprites and items, which will be triggered when you run the game and bump your player (avatar) character into them.

I love how easy it is to use Bitsy to create narrative visual games, and you can get something up and running easily without, as I’ve mentioned, having to do any coding. It has a small set of tools within it that allow you to create the graphics and pull the game together in one place.

Three Haiku created in Bitsy by GiuliaC

On a basic level, a Bitsy uses only three colours for each palette, meaning that you can only have three colours on screen at the same time, and only two frames of animation for your avatar, and each tile, sprite or item. However, it’s easy to go into the game data and increase the colours of each palette and add more frames to the animations. These are the sort of additional changes you can make in the game itself, but there are many other free tools created by the amazing Bitsy community which allow you to build on the basics of Bitsy and develop the features of your game if you want to. These “hacks” allow you to do things like add audio, import your own images you’ve created outside of Bitsy, merge Bitsy games, and even create HD Bitsys (16 by 16 pixel tiles, sprites, and items), and 3D Bitsys too.

To get an idea of what you can do with Bitsy, take a look at some of these free to play tree themed games others have created using the tool.

In the Pines, In the Pines, Where the Sun Never Shines is by Laura Hunt and Thomas Möhring, is inspired by US folk tales and murder ballads (there’s a content warning on the page).

Three Haiku is a visual haiku by Giulia Carla Rossi, who also built The British Library Simulator in Bitsy.

Faerie Mist was created by Freckled Femme and is a great atmospheric example of what you can make with Bitsy 3D.

I created Midwinter Sprits, which focuses on winter folklore in a woodland setting.

The Legend of Stoodley Pike Standing Stones is a collaborative piece created as part of the 2019 Feral Vector event in Hebden Bridge.

A drawing of Boycie the ghost poodle made by Stella Wisdom for The Legend of Stoodley Pike Standing Stones,  a collaborative Bitsy game created as part of Feral Vector in 2019

We’ve curated an itch.io collection of these tree themed Bitsys, along with other tree themed games created using other tools.

To highlight a few of them, Puzzle Tree by BoxORox and Beautiful Tree by the Crounchy Brothers are both puzzle games, but with very different gameplay and aesthetics. There’s also Claire Morwood’s Forest Walk, which is a lovely looking hand-drawn 3D diorama style narrative flat game. Claire has created a number of Bitsys and Bitsy tutorials, which are worth checking out.

Speaking of which, the Bitsy makers community has shared a number of help guides, tutorials and there’s also a Bitsy Discord channel to discuss all things Bitsy if you need help building your Bitsy game. Please do also join us online on 15th May at the Games in the Woods jam launch for more tree themed game-making inspiration.

 A collection of tree themed online games

This post is by Ash Green (@ggnewed) a creative librarian, who writes music, digital stories and makes games. 

If there’s one thing we love here at the Library, it’s trees. They help make books, they’ve kept many of us grounded over the last year of Covid-19 lockdowns, and each and every one of them holds a unique and special history. London itself is home to over 8 million trees, trees like these in our towns and cities are celebrated annually by the wonderful Urban Tree Festival.

This year, the festival runs from 15–23 May and will consist primarily of online events. As part of the Wikimedia residency at the Library, we will be running an online Urban Tree Wikithon to create, edit and improve articles about trees on Wikipedia.

Working together with library innovator, Marion Tessier, literary tree enthusiast, Dr Danielle Howarth, plus Dr Sara Thomas and Stuart Prior from Wikimedia UK, we are excited to be exploring trees from many angles: historical (like some of the oldest trees in the UK), geographical (such as the most northern tree in the world), political (did you know about Glasgow’s Suffragette oak?) and literary (who could forget good old Treebeard or the Faraway Tree?).

The Suffragette Oak, in Glasgow, Scotland by Sara Thomas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

If you have a hankering for all things arboreal, come and join us - Wikipedia editing training will be freely provided at our online launch event on Saturday 15th May at 11:00 BST, plus there will be some drop-in online sessions through the week of the festival to support and nurture your article acorns.

No previous editing experience is needed, we will have a forest of useful resources, hints and tips to help guide you on your way. During the festival please use use #wiktreepedia on social media to share details of your work in progress, including links to tree related articles that you create or improve, or photographs of trees that you have added to Wikimedia Commons.

At the end of the festival, we will celebrate the fruits of our labours at a Show & Tell event on Sunday 23rd May at 11:00 BST.

This post is by Wikimedian in Residence Lucy Hinnie (@BL_Wikimedian) & Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom).

Congratulations to the winner, runners up and everyone who made a game last month for Leeds Libraries Games Jam on Novels That Shaped Our World, which invited jammers to create playful interactive adaptations of books in the BBC’s Novels that Shaped Our World list. To accompany this jam, they programmed a fantastic series of events, which if you missed seeing live, or want to re-watch, can be found in this YouTube playlist.

I absolutely love the premise of the winning submission Frankenstein's Double Wedding, Or, The Modern P…romeo…ethius by WretchedBees (Will Binns). You need a deck of cards to play this solo or cooperative game. Playing as Dr. Frankenstein, with the help of both your monster and betrothed, the game’s aim is to organise a double wedding, arranging catering, a florist, a venue and inviting wedding guests. Not forgetting, that you also need to create a spouse for your monster, before you can both get wed.

Frankenstein's Double Wedding, Or, The Modern P…romeo…ethius by WretchedBees

Well deserved recognition also goes to the two runners up, these are The Open Wizarding Challenge by Suzini56, where to win, players navigate rooms and corridors of their wizarding school, dodging moving staircases and obstacles, aiming to be the first to reach the exit with their bag of collected items, picked up on the way. Also, Fortune of War: A game of Napoleonic era Naval Life by webcowgirl, which is based on Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander books. Writing about her submission she says “this game tries to capture the flavor of the books, with its humor and humanity. Winning isn't just about money, it is ultimately also about pride, honor, and dignity.” Something we would all do well to remember.

Fortune of War: A game of Napoleonic era Naval Life by webcowgirl

Other #NTSOWgamesjam submissions re-worked Pride and Prejudice, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener. You can check these out on the jam’s itch.io entries page. Being a Sandman graphic novels fan, I enjoyed looking at Of You by DarrenLEdwards, which has been structured so this tabletop roleplaying game could also be based on many other fantastical worlds such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Neverending Story, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, The Chronicles of Narnia, His Dark Materials etc.

Well I have posted my game for #NTSOWGamesJam it hasn't been tested, I hope that it is at least vaguely playable https://t.co/LGSGtS6bXF

This is the first #TTRPG that I have actually "finished", so it is good to get something out there even if it needs playtesting

— Darren Edwards (@DarrenLEdwards) April 25, 2021

If exploring fantasy worlds and playing games has inspired you to want to make a game, or if you are a seasoned game maker, then you may want to take part in our Games In the Woods jam this month, which I am running with Ash Green, Marion Tessier from Story Circles and Kingston Upon Thames Libraries, and Cheryl Tipp. This is an online tree themed game jam for all ages, which will run throughout the duration of the Urban Tree Festival. There will be an online launch event on Saturday 15th May with inspiring examples of interactive digital experiences featuring trees and a virtual “show & tell” event on Sunday 23rd May for jammers to celebrate their creations.

Before and during the Urban Tree Festival, game jammers can meet and chat with organisers and each other on our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/qWXH8NcjHE, so please join and say hello on there and use #gamesinthewoods on social media to share images and details of your work in progress.

Games in the Woods game jam

You are welcome to join alone or in a team to create digital and analogue games, interactive fiction, web comics, board games, escape games, card games – anything you want! The only constraints are time, the theme and your imagination. We especially encourage creative re-use of images from the British Library’s Flickr collection of digitised 19th century books, do check out these online Flora and Fauna galleries. There is also a fantastic curated selection of wildlife and environmental sound recordings picked by my colleague Cheryl Tipp, which you can use in your creations. These are available via this SoundCloud playlist.

Sue Thomas, Irini Papadimitriou and Cheryl Tipp

Cheryl is also speaking at a free Digital Nature online event next Monday, 10th May, 19:30 - 20:30. Chaired by Irini Papadimitriou, Creative Director at Future Everything, this event also features Ben Eaton from Invisible Flock (read more about their woodland work Faint Signals here), and author of books on nature and technology Sue Thomas. This is part of the British Library’s springtime season of events The Natural Word, which explores nature writing and reflects on our need to reimagine our relationship with the environment. Hope to see you there.

This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom)

It’s hard to believe, but it’s almost a year since we took a look at some of the weird and wonderful epithets that have been used to distinguish individuals in the Library’s archives and manuscripts catalogue. Twelve months on, the Western Manuscripts cataloguing team is still working its way through the personal name records – correcting errors, enhancing records, and merging duplicate names.

In doing so, yet more items of epithetical interest have emerged. Who amongst us would not have their curiosity piqued by a man described as a pastry-maker and impersonator of King Ferdinand of Portugal? I’m sure we would all wish to take our hats off to the person labelled advocate for world peace (could there be a more noble calling?). We might be impressed at the range of skills held by the builder and composer and be in awe of the derring-do associated with the British flying ace.

But it’s in the area we today call nominative determinism that I’ve started to see some patterns. You know the kind of thing: the farmer whose surname is Farmer, the miller called Miller, and so on. Those are the obvious ones but with a bit of lateral thinking one can find some slightly less obvious examples in Explore Archives and Manuscripts. Nominative determinism once removed, if you like.

The world of religion is a rich seam. We have clergy of various types called Parsons, Bishop, Deacon, Vicars, and Dean, although I’m not sure being called Demons is the most appropriate name for the former owner of a collection of religious treatises.

Then there are the trades and professions. In the catalogue we have a master mason called Stone and a joiner called Turner. And if there’s one thing a bricklayer needs it’s physical strength so being called Backbone is a good start. A schoolmaster called Read makes sense, and when you think of the materials a jeweller works with then so does being called Dargent. A baker called Assh seems ironic (perhaps he was a graduate of the King Alfred School of Baking).

I don’t think there could be a more appropriate name for a soldier than Danger (although Bullitt comes close), and Haddock and Waters seem apt for seafarers too. Ditto, an explorer called Walker.

But of course there are always those who refuse to play along, those who didn’t get the memo. So we have the carpenter called Butcher, the butcher called Baker, the draper called Cooper, the groom called Chandler, the tailor called Fisher, and the mason called Mercer.

And finally, I am disappointed to report that the individual named Le Cat was not, in fact, a burglar.

British Library digitised image from page 47 of "The Wild Boys of London; or, the Children of Night. A story of the present day. With numerous illustrations" available on our Flickr collection

This guest blog post is by Michael St John-McAlister, Western Manuscripts Cataloguing Manager at the British Library.